Category: Recommended: Keymailer

Games from keymailer that are recommended.

[LEGACY] Alwa’s Legacy

Starting off with the sequel to Alwa’s Awakening, what a joy and what a delight after playing the first game. From their game in 2017 to this release in 2020, Alwa’s Legacy is one of the games that I can say visibly and thoroughly improves from the first game to the second. Nearly every point that I had made about the previous game was cleared up, rectified, and that’s always a great thing to see. As if they’ve cleared up those things that so many complained about, it means they are developers who listen, and therefore, developers to follow and trust in. (Just don’t go AAA, please, I beg.)

Despite being a little late to the party, Alwa’s Awakening was something that disappointed me, it felt like a bundle of broken promises and pandering towards those who fall for nostalgia-bait (like the Star Wars Sequels). Despite all the problems still standing, it was a legitimate game and cared about its matters. It stood the test of time for another game to be made and was still good enough to get a mixed rating.
It was always a surprise for me to pick up both Alwa’s Awakening and Alwa’s Legacy on Keymailer, I had just gone through my entire 2k “maybe-list” (steam wishlist) and had no idea what to expect.
Playing Awakening later had me hesitant to play Legacy, I will admit. I remembered my draining experience (further worsened by playing another bad game beforehand, I will admit.) and put off playing Legacy as long as I could. Now, playing it, I realise how silly it was to just assume that those same aspects that I loathed from the game would carry over.

Because it didn’t.
Hence, why this review will be a comparison.


“Most of the platforming requires pixel perfect jumping. I found the platforming some of the easiest to control out of all the games I’ve received from Keymailer, but it takes the happiness of finally having that away from me when showing me the platforms. Granted, not all the jumps are hazardous, death traps, but the ones that are the furthest away from the checkpoint always are, and it hurt my soul.” ~ (Alwa’s Awakening Review)
My soul has been healed. This game still requires some amount of “pixel perfect jumping”, which I would say most platformers need for it to not just be a walk in the park, but in this sense, all the jumping and platforms made sense. Everything made sense. I didn’t feel as if I needed to lean to the side “IRL” (in real life) to make every jump, it was smooth and nurturing but wasn’t afraid to let you fall if you fucked up. The death traps and such are placed appropriately within great consideration of where your last checkpoint was, nothing too unrealistic at all and very considerate while still making it challenging.

“Speaking of checkpoints, Red Cap Zombie Hunter, eat your heart out because you have NOTHING on the placement of these checkpoints when it comes to distance. The placement overall of the checkpoints is actually fine and is nowhere near the randomness that Red Cap does with their haphazard tornado lightshows, but the distance is actually heart-breaking and forced me to recline in my chair for a few minutes on multiple occasions.”
Red Cap Zombie Hunter…. Bro this is how you do it. It’s not about putting checkpoints, it’s about listening to criticism, taking it on board, and not having a hissy fit because people are finding problems with your game. Legacy took the absolutely atrocious checkpoint spacing of Awakening and improved TENFOLD on it. There was almost a point that I thought there were too many, but after unlocking new dangers I realised that checkpoints were necessary everywhere that they were. The game had become a lot more difficult, but at the same time a lot more achievable without throwing your hands up in rage, and it’s all due to the checkpoint placements.

“So if it wasn’t for the amount of dying I was doing sending me back, I also have to do A LOT of backtracking as well. I know it was very common in most older platformers, but with everything combined I genuinely felt as if I was losing the will to live, passing the same area so many times with nothing to gain from it. I only found out that there were quicker ways of going around things, like hidden walls/doors/ceilings/floors, yet I wasn’t to know as they looked the same as everything else!”
Okay, so apart from the one place that I got completely lost looking for an old woman who was the key to me moving on in the game… Once again, such a big improvement. The maps are the same way, in which you could easily get a bit lost, or a bit turned around looking for the way you need to go, but it’s different! The rooms are a tad smaller, they look better, they matter just a bit more. Not only that, but the way that you traverse the map is a lot different too. Many rooms are “one-way” making you a tad nervous as you can’t get back, but then, boom, you get your little power to summon a cube out of nowhere, and you can get back now! Every room and direction is much more purposeful, with fewer dead ends. You can only wander down a route if you have the right powers to do so. No backtracking because you went the wrong way. I still haven’t found any hidden walls/floors/ceilings/doors but seen as this game was a lot more enjoyable than the last, I might go back to it.

“As if backtracking and losing progress to things wasn’t enough, your character is also very slow in comparison to big empty and expanding rooms with not much filling them but maybe one or two measly enemies which will be super stingy about their drops.”
I’m trying so hard not to write vocalised expressions of satisfaction, just thinking back to the change on just how smooth the character is when walking… Your character is faster, smoother at walking, jumps are more responsive and rooms are not big and empty. Everything is fucking tight and fluid, and it’s lovely. I’m not so mad about enemies being stingy with heart drops because my slow-ass isn’t being grabbed as much any more, I’m not getting bored in a room, I’m not actually getting lost or having to backtrack as much. It’s honestly just “mmmmmmm”, as a change from one game to the other, it’s honestly a great feeling, almost as if I’m gliding with each step. (Not to be mistaken for the character being slippery when walking, the character is very much rooted it’s just the change is that blissful)

It’s honestly a great experience, and not just the game itself, but the rise from complaint ridden game to game I genuinely have only small complaints for.
— I still don’t really know the story, but that also seems unimportant.
— I got lost trying to find the old woman because I didn’t realise I could jump through the big orange column, as it literally looked like a wall.
— I don’t understand if I can swim? Or how to swim? Or if it’s a special power I’m missing.

But besides that, take all my positive comments from the previous game, smack them in this review and add some sparkle.
“The art style is cute and nostalgic with appropriate colour palettes, nothing is ugly or “meh” to look at.”
This, but without my apathetic language. The colours are now popping, and while the style of the game is still very much the same, there have been some tweaks to let things pop so much more and be more attractive to the eye.
“The music fits the purpose. It’s chiptune and 8-bit, and most soundtracks fit the appropriate setting they are put in. Boss battle areas seem to lack a little, but most of the others are great.”
Likewise, the soundtracks are a lot better, but I still have the same gripe about boss battle tunes, sometimes they don’t actually exist at all, which makes me wonder if it’s actually a boss battle, but on the game goes anyway.
“There are NPCs all over the map that all have some sort of dialogue (whether relevant or not) which really brings a bit more life to the otherwise empty feeling game.”
The NPCs are so much more real now, they look better, they have better, more believable dialogue and just genuinely, overall feel so much better. Despite me still not knowing what the fuck is going on within the game, everything reads so much better and has me a lot more invested than what I was with the last game.

“The powers learned by the protagonist within the game (specifically the first one where you summon cubes) were generally surprising to me and a lot more refreshing than the generic powerups most games would give you to get around obstacles.”
Same as above, I don’t think the powers have changed much since the last game (since I didn’t actually get all that far in Awakening) but it’s still such a refreshing premise on superpowers. Replacing your typical double jump with something different that allows you to mostly get the same desired effect.
“Not all enemies are the same one. There are different enemies and also different variations of the same enemies that take more hits to kill. That and the bosses are interesting and while not outstanding or grandiose were still a nice bunch of pixels.”
Oh my god, this, but so much more. Yes, the staple enemy to this game is skeletons, but within the first minutes of this game, it shows you so much more. Hidden behind a door you can’t open, in the first area with the old woman, are so many new creatures. You get hit with skeletons at the start, but later on, there’s flower demons, and evil flowers and moving statues and… It’s just great, and the art style switch I think was also key to making these guys look wonderful too. It gives you such a better grasp early on of how much this world has to offer.

Price: £13.99
Time To Complete: 9 Hours
Achievements: 24
Cards: No
Worth The Money: Maybe. It’s almost always on discount, however, so a definite yes on discount.

Overall, this game is so much better than its predecessor, and it strongly suggests that they listen to their fanbase/community/players. From what I can see in the reviews for this one, compared to the last game, there is so much more positivity towards the game and the developers and a genuine want for a third game. It’s not a game I would play on stream and something I’d pick up in my downtime (if I let such a thing exist) and complete casually in my own time. I recommend, if you have both Awakening and Legacy, play Awakening first just to make yourself love Legacy all that much more.

Zesty Rating
9 Out Of 10.
A remarkable difference from the previous game. Improved in all aspects and actually a joy to play. Smooth characters and amazing game design. Diverse enemies and not frustrating to play, but provides a worthy challenge. Massive improvement.

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.
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The Captain

The Captain is one of those games that takes me back to the old days of NewGrounds and Armour Games, a plethora of flash games, all of my favourites being point and click adventure games. (I tried to recreate that magic on Twitch once by only playing flash games on Fridays, but I can safely say that no one was interested.) Despite the very long intro with screeds of text that I ended up skipping most of, I was taken back to that era rather abruptly so that it gave me a bit of whiplash.

The Captain starts out with a whole bunch of story I didn’t ultimately read, but I got the fair gist of it. Bad people have a big army and are going to use a weapon to destroy the sun surrounding a planet of great stature, Earth. To make the shield, that was created to protect the sun work, a costly and time-consuming battery must be made at this station that’s on the outer rim of the galaxy.
In the process of transporting this cell back to Earth, something unfortunate happens with the experimental “warp hole” technology, which leaves your protagonist stranded on the outer rim of the galaxy without the cell and a broken ship.
The BBEG is still en route to s’plode the sun, so you now need to grab the cells and head home ASAP before the sun goes splat.

The reason this game gave me whiplash, however, is because during one of the very first choices, a person died.
A person died because I can’t lie to people, in-game characters or not. I’m not a liar, and especially with a situation as dire as it was… I just can’t lie. Spoiler. It hurt my soul so much.
This reeks of early point and click games, throwing you into situations like that so quickly and without any forewarning. This game went from boring, clicking through all the dialogue that I’m not concerned about, to “Fuck, I almost cried.” Not everyone will have the same reaction as me, however, as I feel things too deeply, but I love it when games take me off guard.

Pros:

  • The game works.
  • The game’s art style is another one I love. Tiny pixels all arranged to make a detailed picture, but still pixelated. I love pixel art so much, as there’s so much you can do with it.
  • The characters are believable, and the situations are gritty and dire, in the best way. Challenging dilemmas that really have you trying to think so widely out the box, but you struggle to know what to do as it’s the first playthrough.
  • The concept of time in this game is handled great. There have been so many games that I’ve played before that I felt handled time and time-based challenges in such a shit way. (Dead Rising 2) I genuinely felt as if I was racing against time in a way that I could genuinely handle, but also felt I had absolutely no grip on. Nothing I could do would give me more time, I just had to make the best use of it.
  • The puzzle elements to this game are VERY flash point and click game. Combining and searching high and low for things. No hints, but the solutions are simple once you get around to them. Minimal puzzles, but always very meaningful.

Cons:

  • Once again, the text in this game is overbearing. There is a lot of dialogue in this game that’s not very much needed. It does give depth to the characters and everything that’s happening in the game, but the amount necessary is way less than the amount provided, and it’s somewhat of a drag.
  • The game is predominantly made for replayability. Any game that has the number of choices, consequences, outcomes and just sheer “anxiety via indecision” inherently wants to be replayed. What lets the game down is the lack of a skip button for things that you’ve already seen and experienced.

I genuinely can’t think of any more cons for this game.
This is literally one of the first games that I have ever played that one of the people watching me at the time came back to me and said, “Yeah, I went and bought this after I saw you play it.”

Price: 15.49
Time To Complete: N/A
Achievements: None
Cards: No
Worth The Money: Yes, play it again and again.

In conclusion, it’s not the best game there is out there for point and click adventures. It also certainly doesn’t rival any of my favourites of the flash era, but is it good? Yes, undoubtedly so. It’s more than definitely worth buying and playing, as it promises a better playthrough every restart and multiple different routes to the path of success.
It’s not the most riveting or inspiring, but it’s another good space story that I can easily say is worth the money and the time you put into it. If you want something that’s as close to a 5/5 as I can give, then try the Don’t Escape series. It’s honestly gamegasm material for point and click adventure/puzzle games.

Zesty Rating
7 Out Of 10
A refreshing return to flash point and click routes. Gripping and gritty decisions ensue, with lots of space travel and sci-fi themes. Replayability is off the charts, make your horrible decisions all over again…

NOTE: This game is flagged as “Replay”.
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[LEGACY] Ratropolis

Ratropolis takes the cake from Castle On The Coast from me for “best game I’ve received from Keymailer yet.” in the grounds that I am playing this game off-stream and really am enjoying it. Castle On The Coast is still by far a better game, but due to me getting motion sickness and Ratropolis being the extremely simple game that it is, makes for a super addicting, challenging but fundamentally easy game to come back to.

Ratropolis is a card battling game, where you use the random draw of the cards to build and upgrade your settlement, all while tower-defencing at either side of your settlement, fending off zombie rats.

You start off the game by choosing which leader you wish to play as (at the start, only being able to pick from a few due to you needing to win games to unlock them), each leader having different advantages to playing them and different powers which you can use to give yourself a boost mid-game.
From here you can also choose where your settlement is located, there are a few areas such as the forest, the coast, and desert, each having their advantages and disadvantages.

From here you’re presented with your “town hall” and a few cards to start you off with, a few army cards, a few cheese cards (when played right give you money), labour cards and house cards.
You gain money in the game via using cards that grant you money or from the tax that’s collected every 5 seconds in-game. You also have a limited number of mice (citizens) at your disposal, which you can increase and decrease with a good strategy.
Every 15 seconds you can reshuffle your deck and draw new cards, the natural amount being 4–5 cards, reusing ones that have multiple uses and using up ones that are one use only. The game gives you the option to reshuffle a lot earlier than this but at the cost of your money, which the cost increases for every wave that passes.

The game is “over” once 30 waves of enemies have been defeated, from here you can choose to exit the game and claim your rewards to keep playing, despite there being no additional rewards. Things get excruciatingly tougher from there, no news is good news and everything that happens is bad. The game really tries to kill you if you decide to continue, to the point where I only survived an additional 5 waves after winning.

Each cheese costs 40 gold, but gives you 30 gold for every cheese in your hand when it’s played. There are 3 cards in hand, so the player gets 90 gold. But when only one cheese card is present, if the card is played, the player makes a loss of 10 gold.

This game is honestly a treasure, I’ve actually not found a lot wrong with this game, and I’ve clocked at least 16 hours into this game by the time I actually get this review done, and possibly by the time that the review comes out I could be at between 20 and 25 hours. Each game is roughly about an hour if you make it to around the 30 wave mark, so maybe I’ll have unlocked everything by then.

Pros:

  • The game works, there are no graphical or audio errors.
  • This game masterfully combines card battling and tower defence in real time in a way that forces you to be strategic but also fast thinking, the enemies come in waves all the time, and you can refresh your hand often with more money, making this game fast-paced and challengingly stressful.
  • The art-style is cute and cartoony, lending itself to the people centred in the game, the mice. When the rats come on screen, the cute art-style lends itself to making the rats oddly more grotesque.
  • Each leader has a completely different playstyle as they all have different buffs and super abilities. Not only this, but they also tend to have their own range of cards that appear too, making it feel like you’re running a different kind of settlement with each different leader.
  • The game produces different waves of different enemies after every 5 levels or so, throwing bosses, mini-bosses and different species of enemy at you. This adds a lot of variety and gives a feeling of progression.
  • Once you’d beaten wave 30 it’s not over! You can continue afterwards on the same game and the game will outright try to slaughter you, or you can exit to the menu and start another settlement with the same character to unlock more cards and in the same area to increase the overall difficulty.
  • So that you don’t have to click everything or scroll/drag around the settlement, the game has easy shortcuts to do things in game. Pressing [Tab] moves you to the latest event, like the merchant appearing or your cheese is ready. Pressing [Space] will reshuffle your cards and [R] will use your ability.

Cons:

  • The tutorial leaves a lot to be desired. I feel as if it taught me all the basics, but when it came to the rewards from the reward chest, I saw “Increase Leader Level” as one of the options and felt like the game had completely skipped out on explaining what that was. Also, a few other small things as well, like the bounty system (for the war leader) and the souls system (for the spirit leader) that were never explained or told where to look or what to do with it.
  • The game is a tad unbalanced, from waves coming too quickly sometimes due to the enemy number increasing every wave, so by the time you’re done with one wave the next is already attacking the other side. Some leader’s abilities are a lot more useable than others, the newest leader that was added not too long ago probably needing a tweak. The overall game is focused heavily on the RNG of everything, especially the cards, which will sometimes blow an entire game out of the water.
  • The interface of the game isn’t the best. I personally would like a tab I could pull up mid-game that show all my stats (maybe not pausing the game but slowing the time down to the same as when placing the cards), or possibly an easier function for moving your military mice around. What this game excels at in ease of play, it loses in the finickiness of everything else.
  • The settlement is initially set up like so; Town Hall-esque building, lots of space either side and then your walls. Once those walls fall you’re done for, you have to then sit and watch the enemy tear through every building between the wall and your town hall before smacking the town hall a few times, and it’s game over. I feel like the last stance should be at the town hall, give it some more HP, some walls, allow me to place troops at it or move troops to it. (Maybe I’m salty because I know that I easily had enough troops to finish off the remaining enemies, but they wouldn’t attack because they didn’t have a wall to defend, and I was on wave 30 and could’ve won, but I think it’s definitely a thing that should be considered.)

Price: £13.99
Time To Complete: N/A
Achievements: 46
Cards: 6
Worth The Money: To the people who really like this kind of game, yes, definitely. On the current sale at time of review publication (£9.79), it’s certainly something to be picked up by anyone.

Overall, this game has stolen my heart and my free time. Over the course of writing this review, I’ve gone and played it multiple times when I should’ve been writing more. Looking back and forth between the achievements and my game to see what I’m missing and what I still need to complete the glossary. It’s still being updated to this very day, which is why I think it’s done so well. If you’re interested in this tower defence, card-battling deck-builder, settlement building simulation game, I’d absolutely say it’s worth a look.

Zesty Rating
8.5 Out Of 10.
A lovely little card-battling, deck building, settlement management tower defence indie game with a lot to offer to those who seek the challenge of not only keeping a colony alive, but keeping on top of tax, and amassing a formidable army. With new and interesting features attached to every different leader, and different ways to die in each different biome, this game is honestly a breath of fresh air.

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.
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[LEGACY] Alchemy Garden

I am completely in love with this game, and the game is still in Alpha. How is this possible? Oh yeah, a combination of things I’ve always loved, a concept that’s always worked and the fact that the dev/devs are seriously putting in a lot of effort into the game. This game certainly enters my top 10 of games that I’ve received from Keymailer, and it’s not every halfway finished yet due to it being in Alpha stage of all things, not even Beta!

Alchemy garden is a game where you, a budding alchemist, move into a shack outside of town and do it up enough to where not only can you live in it but sell from it too. Like Potion Craft, you go through the day picking your plants and herbs, create potions to your heart’s whim and proceed to sell them to the random members of the public that wander in.
Unlike Potion Craft, however, doing everything by hand, picking every flower and mushroom, and running around the entire outside area. It’s so… tranquil. Not only this, but you can also head into town and interact with the townspeople, not that they have much to say yet. There are two shops within the town, one is a seed vendor who sells 3 different types of seeds with varying rarities every day, and a carpenter who sells tools and furniture.

This game is currently in Alpha stage as I mentioned before, so there are a few things I could pick up on that would make the game better, but nothing too game-breaking.
The recipe book that you note all the potions you made in is not very user-friendly, putting the potions that you make in the book in the order that you found them. This makes looking for the recipe for potions really tedious, as you have to flip through every other potion before/after it to find it again for a customer.
Another thing is that when I was placing furniture outside (I’m not sure if it’s after I slept, or after I saved, quit and played the game a day later) on returning to where the furniture should’ve been, it’d vanished!

There’s another few things with objects like flowers spawning on top of each other, the inside of the cave taking half of your stamina to traverse because you have to jump all the time, and the general finickiness of putting ingredients in the cauldron… but aside from that, this game has the makings of something great, and I genuinely can’t wait until the full release.

Price: £7.99 (Update 10.99 now)
Time To Complete: N/A. However, with the limited potions right now, it took me around 2 hours to get all the plants to create every potion craftable.
Achievements: N/A (Yet) (update 44)
Cards: N/A (Yet)
Worth The Money: For most games in Alpha, I’d usually tell you to steer clear of any that cost money, as you’re “paying to test the game”. In Alchemy Garden’s case, I see this as an investment into what the game can become. So definitely, yes.

I can’t write much more about Alchemy Garden, because there’s not that much more to the game. It still has taken 5 hours out of my life and will continue to do so when I feel I need a little of that cutesy, free will, potion maker and sell ’em game.
With that 5 hours, I did the same thing over and over again, reminiscent of my very much enjoyed 400+ hours of Stardew Valley, and not one time was I bored.
If you’re a person who likes the potion making and selling aspect of Potion Craft, the free will and no clear direction of Minecraft and the endless, enjoyable farming routines of Stardew, then £7.99 shouldn’t be too much for you.
Even so, this game goes on sale more often than I stream. So if you’re still not too sure, you can always pick it up for a steal at some point.

Zesty Rating
4 Out Of 5. That first little pip of pomegranate that’s so full of flavour. And because it tastes so good, you know the rest of its insides will taste the same.
A richly colourful and cute game. Harness nature and pick up countless flowers and herbs to make a vast array of potions. Despite being in Alpha, it shows great promise for a full and addicting shopkeeping game which allows you to go at your own pace.

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.

NOTE: This game is flagged as “Retry”.
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[LEGACY] Do Animals Dream?

Do Animals Dream?

The question that’s asked in the title of the game is not expanded on in the way you might think. The game is nothing to do with dreaming in the sense of what happens when you’re asleep, but more to do with hope and aspirations of animals.
Even so, that’s not really the main aspect of this game I procured from Keymailer this time.

You start the game as a daddy whale (not an alternate version of a bear daddy) discussing with his whale son about Mother’s Day… Or was it their mother’s birthday? Having a conversation about what to give her when- “WHAM!” harpoon straight into the kid’s head. The son starts crying saying that he’s scared and all you can pick from the dialogue options is super existential dread producing stuff like; “This is the way the world is.” and “It’s okay, it’ll be over soon.” and “We all die in the end.”. Each one of these dialogue options resorting in another harpoon being launched into the whale-kid’s body.

“I’m not going to lie, once two harpoons were in, I skipped through this. All I saw was the horrifying dialogue options that the father was saying in a horrible attempt to comfort his son but was just being very cynical and death-take-me” while the son was begging for help.

I saw the warnings for this game and I, like a dumbass, ignored them, brushed them aside as “Hah, how can a game like this, with these cute avatars, actually fill the boots that the warning it gave provides?”.
The game rightfully slapped me around the face right at the start and prepared me for what it held within.

This story is roughly about “you” who happens to be the whale hunter that more than likely killed the whale at the start. Your ship crashed into the island where you find a bunch of talking animals and the main focus is this sleeping lion who is actually poisoned. You set out on a quest to gather the ingredients for the antidote which you somehow know how to make and what to look for, and on your journey meet all the other talking animals of the island.

(I did miss a few animals as it was optional and at the point the game had fucked my brain up that much, I just wanted an ending.)

Through meeting the Chicken who was injected with things to make her legs more plump, but instead ended up falling off. A talking crocodile and a massive pig, you’re not only led to finding the ingredients but also a secret laboratory under a waterfall which hints to animal experimentation gone wrong a la Planet Of The Apes style.

Around halfway through the game I made a cheeky observation of the game, it felt like one of those Vegan Propaganda things that are made every so often. So for the entirety of the rest of the game, I found myself questioning it, is it vegan propaganda?
While sadly, I came to the conclusion that it is not, it verges really close to it. This thought of mine may have been because I was viewing the animals as animals, and not “people” with their personalities. Each one is going through something. Most have some amount of existential dread or such a bleak outlook on life, and those that don’t have either of those things are taking “ignorance is bliss” to a level where it’s just sad.
The lion is suffering the loss of his son, and because he leads the entirety of who is left, the loss of everyone else along the way too. An owl has been constantly berated and told that their hobbies are rubbish and that they should just give up. The chicken has such an overwhelming hatred for humans that it blinds her to (rightfully so) stereotype every human to just be the same.

(Edit: Conclusion changed. This is a vegan game. Maybe not propaganda, but I’m not entirely sure. However, I found this as this is what changed my mind.)

“You” yourself even have a whole existential crisis on the top of “special goop mountain” at full moon. It transforms into the mirror image of you, and you start going off about how you hate yourself, calling yourself names and just being so derogatory towards yourself.
(I have no idea how they managed to steal my inner monologue to create such a convincing “self-hate moment”, but I’m impressed.)

I’m still reeling from this moment. Even looking at it actually makes me really uncomfortable, as it hits really close to home. Regardless, let’s get some pros and cons.

Pros:

  • The game works well, no graphical errors or audio bugs.
  • A warning is given for the type of content within the game, a lot of the time, disclaimers are too obscure and don’t really address what is being warned about. This game does a fantastic job of making the player extremely aware of what’s to come, and it lived up to it.
  • Every single character is believable. Whilst talking animals are not the most realistic thing, the characters are for what they are. A suicidal ant, feeling the pressures of being small and gaining sentience being one of the most compelling parts of the game for such a small moment, yet it’s an ant, can you really draw emotional attachment to an ant? Console it? Encourage it to not give up? Or do you just squish it because it’s an ant?
  • The choices in this game do not have a big impact on the game at all, in fact, I’d say they’re meaningless. Which is a great thing. In a game like this where you are trying to cause and/or show how shit and meaningless these animals’ lives are, conveying that through the fact that nothing will change, regardless of what you do, is fantastic. Giving you no reward for doing the right thing, except the knowledge that you didn’t squish an ant in the best way.
  • The game is adorable. I saw in the reviews for this game that it’s like a horror mod for Animal Crossing, and despite never playing Animal Crossing, I couldn’t agree more. The art style and the animations really work lovely together, and makes for an outstanding contrast to the dark and horrible themes within. It was one of the sole reasons this game subverted my expectations.
  • The game was the perfect length. I don’t say this regularly, as the time of the game is not often a valid point in my reviews. This is maybe one of the few times I will say this, as it’s rare to get something so perfectly neat and tidy as this. The game was possibly about an hour long, yet it didn’t feel like it was an hour, I didn’t feel the time go by. I’d call that a “prefect wee game”.

Cons:

  • While the story was great, there were times when I did feel it was a bit empty. The entire game is focused around the interaction with the various animals on the island and nothing more. So if you are not a fan of reading dialogue or don’t feel yourself to bond well with video game characters, then this game will bore you to death.
    Apart from talking, the only other thing to do is to explore the tiny little map of the game.
  • There were two characters (I’m assuming) that I missed. Somewhere after talking to the “goop-me” there was probably an opportunity to find and talk to both a Turtle and an Angry Monkey. I had no clue where the game ended and as far as I’m aware, the game did not hint me to go and find them. By the time I’d headed back to the village, the game was in its ending phase, and I’d missed my chance to talk to everyone. An audio hint or verbal hint to go and talk to them would’ve been great, keeping it still entirely optional and open to making your own mistakes, but I feel I missed out.
  • I feel as though the ending was a bit abrupt, or just a little too simply stupid. Not a stupid ending, but the dialogue at this point felt weak and simplified. I understood the Lion’s motives, and the whole plan of luring people to the island, but it wasn’t such a huge, grand reveal as I feel it could’ve been.

Price: £5.79
Time To Complete: 1.5 hours
Achievements: 7
Cards: None
Worth The Money: Solid, Maybe. The 37% discount it had a while ago which put it to £3.65 was a definite yes. It’s definitely worth a play.

Overall, this game is a great experience for those who like to challenge their morals through talking to sentient animals. It has a great theme, and while the ending (that I got, as I bet there are other endings) was weak and unfulfilling, it was a great ride overall. I strongly recommend this game, whether you wait for a discount or not is up to yourselves.

Zesty Rating
8 Out Of 10
A wonderfully dark and gory story, ending in hardship, should you bring it on yourself. Cute style contrasting the gruesome nature of the game. And despite all your efforts in life, everything eventually dies.

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.
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