Category: Game Reviews

A collection of reviews of games that I played over time.

[LEGACY] Huge Enemy

Huge Enemy is one of the games I’ve purchased in a Fanatical Bundle ages ago, more than likely at a cost of £4.99 for 12 games, or something along those say lines getting this game at a steal at that time. Now the game is free for anyone to play, which I think is a great thing in regard to the negative attention this game has had in the past.
In spite of those past reviews regarding the game, which a lot of I agree with, this game at least deserves some attention because it is good. It’s maybe not great, or fantastic, but it’s good.
The visuals are definitely the best thing about this game,“Paid For” and when this game was “Paid For”, the visuals were what you were paying for.

This game is a good, avoid ’em all, R-type clone, side scrolling sci-fi game. It hasn’t got much of a story to it, you’re essentially a newbie pilot straight off the bat, they pulled you into that position because they need more pilots and after one training session they set you off into the real world.
From there you’re doing that bullet-hell thing, you start blasting, and you don’t stop (until the enemies randomly stop) until you reach the boss and blast the boss as well. The game is a little inconsistent with its difficulty and the amount of enemies on the screen at one time, but while it’s difficult, it’s still somewhat manageable.

Pros:
— It functions as a game with no audio bugs or game-breaking glitches.
— The intro and the splash screen are really cool aspects to the game and set the player up to feel that this is a game of epic proportions.
— The game does well of setting up that tension and combination of feeling hyped for what’s to come but still filled with anxiousness as you know it’s just going to unleash hell on your unsuspecting self.
— The game has a vast array of weapons which keep gameplay fresh and allow the player different methods of getting around problems and overall game completion.
— The artwork in this game is exactly the type of design I love, gritty and detailed, which both looks and feels great when you’re playing it. The bright flashing of the lasers, the explosions and worn battleships all combines to paint a picture of almost hopelessness against the masses that oppose you.
— All music and sound effects are chosen well and fit their purpose.

Cons:
— The upgrade system kinda baffles me, I maybe misread or didn’t see where it told me what to do, so I went a few levels without upgrading a thing.
— Some audio effects were unbalanced in volume, some were really quiet, then the voice-over would boom in. Likewise with in-game, I’d feel as if my guns were so much quieter than the enemies.
— Not so much a con, but this game used to sit at £23.99 back in 2018, so a lot of disgruntled reviews are due to its old price. It came down in price to £3.99 before the pandemic, which is a lot more reasonable.
— Also not so much a con, but the game is pretty difficult, or at least for me who is pretty bad at these types of games, found even the first level (not the tutorial) quite challenging. I couldn’t really get a hold of the default controls of switching guns and also switching which way I’m firing.
— And the last con is kind of a mishmash, the game is a bullet hell, and not, sometimes the screen is too busy, sometimes there’s hardly anything, sometimes bosses are hard, sometimes they’re not, sometimes a level will feel like it lasts seconds, some will feel like they last forever. The game seems to lack consistency, which makes it a bit of a slog to get through.

Apart from all that, there’s also some stuff with graphical errors, nothing game-breaking (or at least from what I found). That and the guns didn’t turn to face the way I was aiming, which I only noticed until after I’d read a review that was a little too upset about that.

Price: Free
Time To Complete: N/A
Achievements: 19
Cards: None
Worth The Money: £23.99? Not at all. £3.99? Yes, to those who like R-Type Bullet-Hell. For Free? Yes, why not? Dip your toes in it.

Honestly, the game is pretty good despite its flaws, and really, there’s nothing stopping you from trying it out to see if the cons I listed do actually affect your gameplay “immersion”. Maybe my cons are a bit too harsh on it because I don’t usually play bullet-hell games due to never being able to have my eyes keep up with what’s onscreen.
Overall, it’s free. Which doesn’t mean that flaws are okay, but considering it came from a very dear price down to a more reasonable one, to nothing at all; I can say it’s more acceptable now than what it was before. As if it was still at its original price, I probably would score this game so much lower.

Zesty Rating
4.5 Out Of 10
A game that shouldn’t be passed up, especially while it’s still free. Japanese influenced bullet hell R-type game. While I don’t tend to like or have the ability to keep up with these kinds of games, I can appreciate that the artwork is amazing, and behind its cons is a playable/enjoyable game.

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.
0

20,000 Miles Under the Sea

20,000 Miles Under the Sea is, thankfully, a game that I’m pretty sure has always been free.
To even call this a game is honestly an insult to even the top-tier trash games, such as ABST Clicker Farm and Abscond (Not the actual Abscond Game, but the “developer’s” audacity to release it as their game).

If you’re like me, and you have irritating, but very true thoughts pop into your head now and again, then you’ll know that there’s a certain point in life where the question: “How high can you count?” goes from being a matter of knowledge to a matter of will.

That is this “game”.

This “game” is just a test of mental endurance to see how long you can last, staring at a screen, while you lethargically descend into the depths of the ocean.
There is not much to look at, you can’t look around or explore really. The only option you have in the game is “Auto-swim”, where you just descend, and “Not Auto-Swim” where you just descend, but you can sluggishly swim forward.
Shoals of fish randomly spawn in and out with glitchy animations and bad implementation overall, phasing through solid rock and coral. Even Mario 64 had fish that you could interact with.

Of course, you can’t have an underwater game without having a horror element! So, only in the description of this game on Steam will you see that:

This is a simple idle horror game, and all that is required of you is to observe the life of the underwater world and wait.

Continued with:

But please remember that you are not alone – a terrible creature inhabits this abyss. If you’re too scared to meet this monster, you can tap out any time you like…

Ooo spooky, so where is this terrible sea creature?
It doesn’t exist.
All it is, is a terribly done jumpscare, which is easily avoided in one of two ways. Keep auto-swim on, as if you’re in auto-swim mode it doesn’t touch you for some reason (either that or the RNG was super unlucky), or moving away from the obvious red dots.

What also doesn’t exist is this bullshit.

This image shows the developer of the game claiming that the first person to reach the bottom of the game will receive $20,000.

Yeah, I don’t think you’re fooling anyone with this.

This image shows the developer admitting that there is no cash prize of $20,000, and that money will only be handed out if people buy the music.

Yeah, you weren’t fooling anyone.

As far as I could tell, using all the resources that I could, the soundtrack was not bought once.
Checking Steam sale records and various other 3rd party sites that track information like this, I found absolutely nothing.
This was a clear attempt to get people to play it, so they could get better feedback for the game (which never happened) and get some pennies back.
As discussed in the Abscond review/investigative piece that I wrote, it costs around $100 for developers to publish a game on Steam. It makes sense that the devs would make a desperate grab at their financial loss of a release.

Aside from this, what else do we have in the game?

  • Horrendous crashes that persist after the developer has updated/patched the game twice to “fix” these errors. Happening so often that I experienced at least 5 crashes within the 24 minutes I was able to hold out.
  • No option to mess with the sound. If there is, I cannot find it. Pressing the escape key, in hope that it would bring up a menu, took me out of the game and “marked my name” where I stopped. I had to start all over again. Thanks, this is undoubtedly what I wanted.
  • No clear indication, in the game, of how to play or that you have to avoid the red dots, or how to avoid them. Nothing telling you what or how to do things at all.
  • The “game” is so mind-numbing that the developer themselves instruct you: “you can minimize the game and continue to go down, doing other things.” if it’s too “tiring”. Just leave the game on, minimise it and do something more fun is their advice. Thanks, again. Brilliant game.
  • To add to the last point, the game is so badly optimised. Not to mention the crashes again, which are probably partially caused by this issue, but this “game” eats up all of your resources because of the bad optimisation. GPU? Gone. RAM? Gone. Shaders people! Fix your fucking shaders!

And to top it all off, is the most annoying part of the game. The name markers.
So, you accidentally exited out the game, or you’ve had enough, and you exit the game. That’s a name marker added with your name on it, but it’s not just you who can see it. Everyone can.

And you can’t turn it off.

You must sink, 20k feet, staring at the blur of mashed up names as so many people either crashed or gave up within the first 5 minutes. It’s then evenly spacing out a bit more until you reach the 30-minute mark, and another massive mash of names again where people have taken a gigantic sigh and turned the game off.

This, but thousands more names overlapping each other, covering the entire screen.

The “beautiful, underwater scenery” in this game, you want to see it? Too bad, you’ve got to stare at this clusterfuck of names.
Thank goodness, the game doesn’t “start” until you get past this absolute mess, although, I doubt you’ll be paying attention to find that out.

Price: N/A
Time To Complete: Apparently around an hour.
Achievements: 28
Cards: N/A
Worth The Money: It’s not even worth being free, to be honest.

It’s not worth a fun rating.

0 Out Of 10

While it is not the country of origin that defines the type of game a developer produces, you will find that a lot of “Shovelware” comes from Russia. People who are well versed in Steam and cheap games will know this already.
I can only see so far, and my scope is limited to so many, different variables:
— Time of purchase
— Impulsivity
— Jumping on bundles/sales
— Complete disregard for my own enjoyment, just to sate an urge to buy something that looks bad.

Yeah, I’m bullshitting, but it’s a half-truth. There have been Brazilian games and Portuguese and English games I’ve played that all fit these categories. Cheap games, made to barely hold themselves together, to sit on Steam and slowly farm pennies until the $100 is paid back before Steam finds the game and deletes it. But not as many as I have Russian.
This is predominantly because of where I bought these games initially, and where I get them from now.

DailyIndieGame is one of the big reasons as to why I have a lot of these (apart from the few times I went to Russian sites and paid £10 for 250 games) games are in my Steam library. The promise is, from the site, to highlight creator’s games. Giving them out in bundles for small prices. It’s honestly a decent way to do things, but after a while I had to take a step back and check what I was actually buying because… ehhhhhhh. I maybe just paid £0.66 for The Wasteland Trucker, but… Yuck, I paid THAT, for THIS??

Another culprit (of no bad means) is Steamdb’s Free Game activator. Any time a game goes up for free, whether just newly released for free or discounted to free, it will activate it on your account. It’s responsible for the fact I have over 11k items in my library now and if you load up my steam games list IT WILL CRASH YOUR CLIENT/BROWSER.

It’s safe to say, you can expect a lot more Shovelware reviews. We’ve got my whole library to look forward to reviewing. 

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.
0

[LEGACY] Midnight: Submersion – Nightmare Horror

I think the steam review by nbartley1998 sums this game up completely.

“Load game
Confused immediately
Walk outside
No directive
Get punched by slappy the dummy
Uninstall game
10/10”

Once again, another horror game that I was excited to play, once again another horror game that I have uninstalled and will never touch again.

Keymailer once again has supplied me with what I thought was going to be the next Kraven Manor, spooky mannequin-esque looking art puppets, littered around an abandoned and ruined town/village. Instead, what was delivered in this game was a walking simulator where you pick up pieces of paper with information and listen to a radio.
I say this because I didn’t get much further than the first area of this game; after having to play through the first area 3 times, I was almost already done.

You start off with the typical horror cliché of waking up somewhere that’s not your bed, I have nothing wrong with this cliché, I just have to point it out. From here you get a torch and are told to leave the room, I, however, could see nothing as when it had told me to grab a battery and to replace it, it was extremely lacking on the part of telling me how to actually “do the thing”.

Restart the game to try again.

Once again waking up, paying SUPER close attention to the instructions and picking up the battery, once again I stand right in front of the door that I assume I will be exiting the building via before my battery runs out. Assuming that this area, considering it was literally a wall of windows and the door itself had windows, maybe I’d be able to see? Nope, the lighting in this game is terrible.
And again, paying close attention to the instruction did me no service, the battery would not change in the torch, the light went out, and the door would not open. I got understandably irritated and started jumping everywhere around the room I was currently locked in, completely blind due to the lack of battery changing, and managed to glitch myself into a bed.

Restart.

Zoom, up out of bed I got, I picked up that battery and I looked everywhere. Anything, anything, have I missed anything at all???. I found nothing, it was only that one battery and only that one door, and as the torch started to fail on me, I did what I had before and darted back over to that door.
All this time, in all my “playthroughs” the music had been unnecessarily suspenseful, like the darkness was dawning on me, trying to eat me, but as much as I would’ve blamed it on my inability to change the battery it’s my 3rd attempt, the music is not phasing me any more and is actually annoying me.

The light went out, and I stood at the door, I reclined back in my chair, defeated. Gaining back some will to play, I pressed every button on my keyboard to no avail. My chat pointing out to me that the game was bad, all I can manage is a cynical and snarky “Yes, yes it is…”.

So once again I let out my frustration on the game, this time by pressing my “R” key just about as hard and fast as someone trying to take over their local Pokémon Gym on Pokémon Go, but with just a sprinkle of hate.
And suddenly, on maybe one of the longer pushes, or perhaps it needed to be hated, it worked.
Wow, amazing.

Okay, so I’m out now. What do I do?
The game has completely no directive or incentive to do something and has you aimlessly wander around gawking at things that aren’t scary (perhaps for people who’re afraid of mannequins, possibly…) and suffer the game’s fatal attempt to create a terrifying environment.

Don’t get me wrong, this game, without all its jumpscares and loud noises and blatant attempts to be scary, is actually very eerie. The setting and the placement of the mannequins really work, the environment outside the playable area is excellent too, eerie as heck. I feel like this game has done too much in some areas and not enough in others. Trying way too hard to be scary too early and not enough on the actual playability of the game and the ease of playing.

To put it down to a tee, this game has the makings of a standard horror game.
It uses tropes such as the refillable battery that has been overused since Outlast, the concept having existed before then, Outlast making every horror developer thinking they need it in their game.
You don’t need it in your game for it to be a good horror game.
Using wandering around with a semi-cut path for you, using the one road up the centre of the town/village to navigate your way through, finding notes with people’s personal logs and mostly irrelevant information.
Only one of these notes is actually helpful, being right beside the padlock with the number combination, a little too easy, but it’s the only one that actually was relevant.

After walking around the entire village, seeing a mannequin walk all creakily, rub my groin against every fence to see if I was missing a way out to get to the big factory behind the town, parkouring into ruined buildings that had nothing in it and getting right up in every mannequin’s personal space I was then socked in the face by the very last mannequin I encountered.
I’m calling him Barry.
Barry socked me in the face.
I’d walked past Barry before, and he was a regular mannequin, he looked as if he was having an argument with his mannequin buddies with the way he was posed, but I never went up to see what was happening before, other things took priority. On coming back to see if sticking my face in Barry’s face would advance the game any further, it initiated an in-game cutscene where he just started moving, grabbed me and socked me in the face. Rude.
Oh, and to note, this restarted the entire game and all my progress was lost. Barry, who looked like every other mannequin, has the ability to kill me and my game. With no warning or “eerie music” or anything to ward me away from doing such a thing, Barry has the ability to just smite me.

Screenshot from Kraven Manor, an infinitely better mannequin horror game.

There will be no pros and cons.
It’s unfair to list cons when the pros will hardly do me writing a list any justice. Especially when it will mostly just be “Game works and looks and sounds good, but that’s about it.”
So onto the little chart, conclusion and rating.

Price: £3.99 (Originally £6.99)
Time To Complete: N/A
Achievements: None
Cards: None
Worth The Money: No. This game was quickly reduced to £3.99 for a reason. If worked on, I’d say it has the potential to meet being worth it’s original price, but not right now.

Overall, this game is another one I add to the pile of games that could’ve been something great or even just “okay”, but falls so hard due to paying attention to one aspect of the game over more important aspects. With the massive potential to be another one of those great mannequin horror games that have become horror connoisseur household names, falling flat on it’s face at nearly every hurdle right off the bat. It’s honestly not worth trying to figure out how to progress to the next area.

Zesty Rating
1.5 Out Of 10. As full of flavour as that lemon I bit into at a showroom. Polystyrene.
Another indie horror game that falls flat at every hurdle it attempts right off the bat. Eerie and spooky mannequins, ruined by bad playability and trying way too hard to scare the player too early in the game. Barry slapped me good, right back to the start, so I said “nope.”.

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”.
0

KARTOFELKA

Kartofelka is another game that I have no idea how it got into my steam library.
It’s not free and never has been free.
The lowest it’s ever been being £0.39 and still not enough to make me consider buying the game.
Yet, I still have this game in my library, so at one point I asked myself, “what would be the harm in playing it?”

This game appeared in my library on the 14th of August 2019. I do not know what I was thinking when (more than likely in a shady £15 for 150 games bundle) purchasing this, nor do I wish to know what mindset I was in.

Now to make a very obvious statement.
This game is not a masterpiece, nor is it even something you’d want to compare to a masterpiece to improve how the masterpiece looks.
This game is another one of those games that I choose as an example to show people shovelware games, or low-effort games making the indie scene look like it only holds rubbish.

It’s another game to add to your library in the sense that it increases the game count that you have +1.
It’s another game to add to your library as it has achievements. How many achievements you ask? Why… 4999 of course! Four thousand, nine hundred and-fucking-ninety nine. Not 5000 for some bloody reason.

This game is the same as what happens when people think they can just stream on Twitch and get 100 followers a day. Thinking they’ll start making enough money to support themselves within a month of just fanny-ing around on their webcam whilst streaming Fortnite.
The developer of this game threw a platforming game together and created the game to give you 5k achievements. People who are on Steam who value achievements over anything else bought this game at £0.79 just for those.
The developer abandoned the game around 20 days after posting it on Steam and reaping the rewards.

Okay, so, not such a big deal, right?

This was far from the truth, what had actually happened was that there was a huge problem coming from the target audience of the game. Those who bought it primarily for the achievement spam.
The achievements didn’t even work!
Through my personal experience playing the game, these reports were correct (and I was playing this a year after this issue unravelled), when I loaded up the game and the main menu popped up, the achievements started flowing in. However, when I started playing the game, the spam stopped. I thought that maybe it went silent because I was now playing the game, and it went onto a “Do No Disturb” mode.
After about 30 minutes, I checked to see if I’d got all 5k “cheevos”, but I had not. They were broken, as people said.

So, the only two posts by the time I’d bought this game (Aug 2019) were, “HOW TO GET ACHIEVEMENTS” and “Achievements Stuck”.
Considering that the last time that the game was updated was 20 days after the game was released, and that these discussions were made after that, it is reasonable to believe that the developer never addressed this issue.

In fact, in the post that the developer made on how to get achievements, they stated that they cannot fix the game due to having lost the original files for the game and only have the copy that was released.
The fact that they couldn’t fix it was a little weird to me, as they created the game, and being experienced in computer game development myself, wondered why they couldn’t.
Or why they didn’t bother.

One person in the comments of this discussion made a very valid point, however.
“If the achievements aren’t working as intended, and the way to get them is to not play the game and idle the main screen for 3 hours, then take the achievements off.”
This, of course, never happened.
It was the main selling point for this game.
And it’s continued to have sales, and discounts to encourage people to buy this broken game for it’s broken achievements.

Despite it being broken, and the developer acknowledging this, they refused to take the false promise of 5k achievements off the game as it was still bringing in money. Game-stats.com estimating that it’s brought in a net revenue that exceeds the cost of putting a game on Steam.

So, that was the tea about the game.
Is there a lot to say about the game itself, besides the broken achievements?

  • Painful music that loops for every level. It sounds okay at first, maybe a bit elevator music-esque. About halfway through the loop, it sounds as if their cat decided to wreck the entire music production, jumping on everything and clawing at it.
    I’m in no way music professional, but I had to mute the game as it was setting me off sensory-wise.
  • The best jumping mechanics (sarcasm). If you are right beside what you want to jump onto, it won’t do it. It’s almost like there’s an invisible ledge preventing you from obtaining your goals, like a glass ceiling.
    Instead, it accurately represents what fat folk, like me, need to do to even get over a small fence, get a running start. Basically, you need to go backwards to go forwards+up. Oh, and jump is shift, so forget about opening Steam Overlay the default way.
  • The best glitches. There are moving platforms in this game. It makes the case for the best bugs. Basically, when you miss jumping onto the moving platforms (and you will) you will get stuck inside the platform. Not only that, but when you are on top of the platform, your sprite will float mid-air at the peak of the moving platform’s vector.

None of these are game breaking, but are incredibly frustrating from not only a player’s standpoint, but a game maker’s as well.
Just a warning, though, don’t press the Esc key. If there’s a pause, Esc is not the pause key. You will lose all your progress and have to start again. But hey, more fun for you, you get to play it twice!

Price: £0.79
Time To Complete: 1 Hour (3 Hours Idle on Main Screen if you actually want the achievements)
Achievements: 4999
Cards: No, thank goodness.
Worth The Money: It’s not even worth being free.

Zest Rating
2 Out Of 10. Infuriatingly Bland
An “OK” looking platformer, thrown together to make a quick buck out of people seeking to artificially fill out their Steam Achievement hoarding problem. Sloppy coding, hitboxes, and horrible music aren’t the least of your worries when the 5 Thousand Achievements don’t work either.

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.
0

[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”.
0

Bang Bang Fruit 2

DISCLAIMER: While this in my perspective is a “repost” of sorts, this review was never published on my previous place of writing. This is due to the owner of the website refraining from supporting any Russian developers because of the Russia/Ukraine war. I, myself, am making the executive decision to post this despite the war, as not “all publicity is good publicity”. 
The next couple of reviews will be shovelware from (more than likely) Russian developers. These reviews are not positive, and I do not expect the negative things I say to prompt people to support these developers. Likewise, I'm aware that Russian game developers are not who are waging war on Ukraine, and countless people don't want this conflict.

Okay, so you’re probably wondering what I’m doing, reviewing a game like this. The answer is simple.
The game is simple.
I’ve played the game.
I can make a review, so I will.

Bang Bang Fruit 2 is the sequel in a line of physics based, 2D, puzzle games, where the aim of the game is to shoot a fruit (strawberry) through the level and have it land on top of the cake.
A basic premise, which as usual, is horribly implemented with very little effort.

Quantity over quality is how developers like these operate who create games like this.

This game is an extension of the sequel, which has the same concept.
I’d even go as far to say that they’re probably just the same game, but I don’t think these developers would sink that low. (fingers-crossed they’re not like the devs of Abscond)
However, they do jump on the all popular train of churning out easy-made games, quick throw-togethers to follow popular online memes, and hentai. Now, there’s nothing especially wrong with hentai, but when you’re able to throw out one a month, I start to wonder about the content.

Ah, battleship where if the opponent loses then they strip? Or maybe for each hit, a layer disappears.
And the game previously?

*Shudder*
One of those tile slider games…

Okay, so the developer of Bang Bang Fruit 2 mass produce things, but it’s not plagiarism, despite being blatant shovelware. Still not completely good, but at least the game is legitimate.

The game itself is a sound concept as far as simple puzzle games go, if it were not for the failing of multiple things.
Firstly, the game in itself is not the most challenging. With about 30 levels in the game, the levels are altered in different ways to produce new experiences, new obstacles and new ways of trying to think out the puzzle.
All of these things, however, can be completely voided by the fact that I can just shoot for trial and error, over and over again, with no downside. You aren’t concerned with the puzzles after a while, but it probably takes the same amount of time to shoot the fruit at the cake with this random chance.
Things are altered, but not in such a way that continues to make it interesting.
Colours are changed, backgrounds are different and that’s about it, asides from the new obstacles. The new obstacles being few and far between and not really engaging in raising the difficulty at all.
I’ve actually found, myself, that on a few of the maps that encourage you to use the new mechanisms added, you can actually just fire the fruit regularly and pass the level.

Any difficulty experienced in the game is down to the horrible level design and weird physics.

So, how are the physics odd?
They are not entirely. The fruit uses generic (non-bouncy)ball physics for the most part, acting like a lead sphere most of the time. Fruit does not bounce, but I’m sure at the velocity that it would achieve after being shot out of a cannon would give it enough energy to not act as flat as Amber Heard’s acting.

Once you have wrapped your head round that part of the physics, the cake itself is an entirely different demon. It has its own peculiar sense of gravity that is made so that when your fruit hits the cake, the fruit stays on the cake. Or at least, that’s how it’s supposed to be.
One of the biggest problems I had with the game was getting the god-damn fruit to stay on the god-damn cake.
It sounds like a cakewalk, it was not, even with the odd gravity applied to the cake. Every so often, the unusual gravity was not enough, and I had to watch the fruit slowly roll off the cake. Why did it not stop? No one knows!
But on the other hand, at times the stopping mechanism for the cake was just too good! A shot that may have been a bit risky, but would’ve completely paid off, is your worst enemy. Your fruit landing on the corner of the cake, going in the direction where if it hits the cake it would roll to the centre… Cake-Gravity says no. In fact, the cake gravity is made in the way that regardless of what direction you hit the cake from, the fruit is programmed to only roll in the one direction. Which, in the risky case, is right off the cake.

Another point to stay away from this game is the lack of save function. Any progress you make, up to any level, of any stage is not saved.
If you exit this game, even after completing 90% of this game, despite there being solid level structure with definite ends and beginnings, you’ll have to play the entire thing again from scratch.
This is an absolute pain in the arse, specifically to those people who bought this game to reap the achievements from them.
Why are the achievements relevant? They always are, but in this context, the previous game was one of those which gave you all the achievements as soon as you opened the game. Essentially purchasing a bundle of achievements and a completed game for money, without having to put in any skill or labour into earning anything.
I don’t agree with the people that support this, who actively go out and purchase games like these, just to make their perfect game / completed game count higher. There’s no merit to it besides making yourself look like a huge “sadd-o”.

Example of said person I found making a “review” for either this game or another game. With 459,245 hours playing, which equates to 52 years. This person I doubt is even in their mid-30’s. 1332 Perfect Games with a 98% completion rate. Nah.

Continuing to lead players on in the false promise of steam trading cards, targetting another gullible audience (not all steam trading card hunters are gullible) which will scoop up any game with cards or the promise of cards.
Cards for this game initially were promised via the tag system that devs can use after publishing the game, and at one point had even a dialogue that hinted/alluded to cards.
These were eventually taken away, but the irritation by older buyers of the game is still seen in old reviews and discussions complaining about the blatant false advertising.

Developers had later informed those asking about cards that it was no longer possible due to the actions that Steam has taken to reduce the amount of money made by fake developers by introducing a “confidence metric”.

Instead of starting to drop Trading Cards the moment they arrive on Steam, we’re going to move to a system where games don’t start to drop cards until the game has reached a confidence metric that makes it clear it’s actually being bought and played by genuine users. Once a game reaches that metric, cards will drop to all users, including all the users who’ve played the game prior to that point. So going forward, even if you play a game before it has Trading Cards, you’ll receive cards for your playtime when the developer adds cards and reaches the confidence metric.

https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1954971077935370845

This is a great metric, while it does nothing to stop fake developers and Steam’s quality control continues to be at an all-time low, it’s guaranteed that fake developers are making less money than what they would.

Otherwise, a few last points for this game:

  • The music is abysmal. It’s the same thing over and over again for the whole 20 – 30 minutes you spend playing the game.
  • There is only one sound (which I heard) that is when you fire the fruit from the cannon, no contact noises and no noise for when the fruit hits the cake.
  • The level designs are really lazy, consisting of copy-paste elements of the same standard shapes, over and over again.
  • What’s even more lazy is that the only thing you need to do is time your left-click right. There is no finesse to the game or requirement for any brain strain. No changing the pitch of the cannon, no adjusting the strength of the blast, no factors that you can alter at all.
  • The game description on the store page is “Just make a cake.” The cake is already made! You’re just putting the strawberry on top! Also, shouldn’t it be a cherry? Cherries don’t go on cakes, but the phrase is “the cherry on top”, or “the cherry on the cake”, why is it a strawberry?

Price: £0.79
Time To Complete: 38 Minutes – One Full Sitting
Achievements: 36
Cards: No.
Worth The Money: It’s not even worth the time I spent writing this.

Zest Rating
2 Out Of 10. As Sweet As Out-Of-Season Fruit.
A cheap, nothing-more-than-template game, which adds to the clogged and oversaturated market which is Steam. Bright colours, but generally tacky. Works as a game, but that’s about it. A full 38 minutes in one sitting of your life that you’ll never get back, and you ask yourself, “Were the achievements really worth it?”

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.
0

[LEGACY] Unturned

Okay, so this game review is a long time coming.

Unturned is a game that I’ve spent countless hours in. Excluding the games that I used to play on my Xbox back in the day, when hours weren’t counted, and you couldn’t see how addicted to a game you really were.
It goes as far to say that after a year of playing Unturned, I was already satisfied with the product. Having downloaded it back in 2013/2014, (ass-end of 2013 or early 2014) by the time that 2015 rolled around I had already bought the “Supporter Pack”, or whatever it’s called (Permanent Gold Upgrade).

The Permanent Gold Upgrade was a $5 pack that was purely cosmetics (at the time) and the key purpose was to show your support to the lone, Canadian developer. I’m pretty sure I jumped on that about 3 months into the game.

Along comes 2015, and my first-ever review was for this game:

~“Unturned is an excellent game with great potential. With the latest updates, the games mechanics run much smoother and the crafting mechanics are much easier than first off. Servers are easy to access and a little less glitchy than before when hosting numerous players, but overall a brilliant game in the making, would’ve expected a game like this to cost money. I’m still playing this game after a good 2 years. It’s got better and worse in many ways. *cough cough* nerfing. But I still love the game.”~

I’ll leave in all the horrendous spelling mistakes and horrible grammar, as much as it kills me to look at it. That salt is hilarious, though.
This wasn’t actually my first review, as I believe that I’d made one before that, which was similar to, “its a good game :)”. Steam, however, didn’t have the function at that point where if you edited your review, you could quote the previous version.

After 7 consecutive years of playing Unturned, I am revisiting this review, and the game itself.
For the first year solid, I played entirely single-player, like the little idiot I was. Being 12/13/14, I had the most limited grasp on online lobbies and how it worked for PC. I was a console pleb and the only multiplayer I knew of, I only had to press one button to be opposite hordes of squeaky, screaming, cat-calling pre-teens and teens (If you guessed Call of Duty then you’re correct).

After that year, an update caught my attention, and for some reason I pressed multiplayer. Four years of my life, and it was the only game I played after pressing that damn button.
I found a clan of people that I got along really well with, who in turn really enjoyed the fact I was female, which in turn always got me staff in servers in less than 7 days.
And for the last 2 years playing, once the clan had disbanded as everyone had to go off and be adults, I played on and off after I got my orange beret (which you received after two thousand hours in-game).

This game is worth money, but it doesn’t cost money.

If you’ve not had a chance to play this game before, the best thing I’ve heard it be called is Roblox zombies. Which is somewhat of a compli-sult, really, but I’ll take it.
After playing many more games since then, I can tell you that it merely has the graphics of Roblox/Minecraft, but with that come the endless capabilities that these games ensue, with full moon mechanics like 7 Days to Die. The zombies raid your base, but at a less startling rate than what those of 7D2D do. They are, however, empowered by the moon and have glow-y red eyes, which for a newbie player and people easily startled can give them a startle.
The game is experience-based, and nearly everything gives you experience; from chopping trees, to mining to killing zombies, each gives a varying amount. The experience you then get, you can spend on levelling up skills and abilities, which makes traversing and surviving a lot easier, not only that but attacking, gun accuracy and damage output.
The game also comes with different levels of playing, easy, normal, hard, custom. Which not only alters physical difficulty but the scarcity of food, item drops, the condition of food and items and so on.

There’s definitely a reason as to why the developer was interviewed countless times for this game.

Of course, the game does have its issues as well, like any other game.
The fact that the game is free means that the game will always be populated to a certain extent. However, the numbers have been dropping for a good while.
In my opinion, it’s been dropping the entire time, but the biggest drop was when the “special” zombies were added and several names for zombies, map areas and guns changed.
At the time of the changes, there were a fair number of maps out, and the player-base was split across them in terms of favourites. There was one map; however, that was the least played on. The original map called PEI. There were major changes to this map, as well as most people’s favourite part of the map (a hidden bunker that everyone used to fight over) being completely deleted.
The special zombies that were added were different to the regular zombies. Regular zombies had 3 different types, standing, on all fours and crawling. Except for the “Mega Zombie” who was a massive zombie that could one-hit you with a punch or through a boulder in your general direction.
The special zombies, however, were weird. Introducing zombies that spit acidic goo as they walk, zombies that are coated in fire and explode in flames if you shoot them, and electric zombies that can zap you from afar. Most players at the time were more or less thinking “What the heck is that?” rather than “This is precisely what we need, fantastical fantasy-esque powers for the zombies that were already bordering on perfection.”.
What was messed with was an already fantastic formula of zombie-making, those bland and “usual” zombie designs were all that the games needed, no fantastical elements.

(Editing notes: Going back on this, the supernatural way that these zombies seemed to have these “powers” was what made them ridiculous.
Fire Zombies: Make sense if you’re in a burning building or near one a la 7 Days To Die style, different zombies, different biomes. Fire zombies in fire environments, burning cars, burning buildings, forests engulfed with fire. And would also make more sense as to the firefighter equipment being added. Being in a fire environment depleting the oxygen bar, but slower than when you’re underwater. Also adding to your disease meter, but slower than when you’re in a deadzone.
Electric Zombies: can’t find any reason for them to exist, honestly, but I’d honestly nerf them as they were perfectly capable of sniping you last time I checked.
Acid Zombies: Slightly alter them, instead of having a spitting attack, replace with a “semi-ground pound”. When a zombie falls from a height, have it splodge out “toxic goo” instead. Being in proximity of them causes disease to decrease slightly slower than being in a deadzone. Being touched by them not only taking the regular chunk out of your health but an even bigger chunk out of your disease, leaving also a residual timed effect of slow disease increase.)


If you’ve played a free game before, you’ll be aware of what comes with a free game is no pay-wall. Absolutely no filter to the type of people you come across in the game. This is good and bad in and of itself, but it means you have no idea the age or temperament of someone until their gun is up your arse, cursing, swearing, profanities and the occasional racial slurs.

In terms of bad things about the game itself, there’s not much. There are plenty of things that will be subjective, like the art style and the mechanics; like bullet drop and things. Things that are considered “controversial” within the game’s community.
However, there are certain problems when faced with multiplayer, as a lot of the maps used for single-player. While these maps great for multiplayer, they can’t cope with the number of people building things at the one time (aka Washington, and it’s Lag Wall).
There are unplayed maps like the barren, snow map called Yukon. Which I know many people like, but just not enough people like it for it to be used for any of the multiplayer servers.

Price: Free To Play (Can Buy £3.99 upgrade)
Time To Complete: N/A endless survival game.
Achievements: 63
Cards: 13
Worth The Money: It’s free…. Yes. If they charged the £3.99 for the game instead of an optional extra, it would still be worth it 100%.

Genuinely, if you’re looking at this and considering it, you should definitely pick it up and play it. I made some of the best friends and memories within this game, and I do not regret playing it one bit. I’m always looking forward to the next big thing from the developer of this game (and still waiting for Unturned 2 despite the fact it was supposed to be being released years ago) and cherish it with all my heart.

Zesty Rating
9 Out Of 10.
A free to play, open world survival, zombie game. Created by a lone developer and built with a lot of love and devotion, and it shows. One of the main reasons it’s still a very highly played game today, and has been for a long time. It sustained my interest for over two thousand hours, and if I got other people into it with me, I could probably play two thousand more. 

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.
1

[LEGACY] Árida: Backland’s Awakening

ARIDA: Backland’s Awakening is an open world game that I was really looking forward to, I saw on Keymailer and immediately requested it. It’s a desert/backlands survival game where you have to keep tabs of your food and hunger while trying to reach a specific place, also picking up side-quests along the way. (Reminding me a tad of the vibe of The Flame in the Flood)
It’s definitely not a catfish game, where it misleads me into thinking something it isn’t or saying that it’s something or not, but I still feel a little empty playing it.

ARIDA: Backlands Awakening starts off really well, having a good starting story and nice little picture by picture cutscenes, representing their situation really well. The town that the main character lives in, used to be a lush, bountiful town, producing lots in terms of cattle and food produce (as it would not make much sense to make a town in a barren wasteland). At some point, the town was engulfed with a drought which severely affected everything within the town. With limited water supply, they could no longer grow enough food, support the cattle they had, and everything eventually started withering and dying.

The town was, however, considered a holy town, and leaving it was taboo, until pilgrimages to a new town where it rained every other day started, splitting the community in two. Those who saw it taboo to leave the holy town, and those who saw the pilgrimage to the new town as a new holy journey and the drought a message from their belief to leave.

After being served the harsh truth about the world a few quests in, you’re also handed your situation, the pilgrimage that you were supposed to join already happened. Something else shit happens, which I’m not going to spoil, and you’re forced to make this pilgrimage all by yourself and leave the stupid priest to preach to an empty town. (sorry, but I think the priest is a bloody idiot, the town is dire, and he still wants to stay despite the conditions. I get being determined, but this is just blind stubbornness due to being overly invested in their religion and sacrificing themselves to trying to prove a point that will eventually kill them.)

So from here you mostly already know what you need to do, you can gather water, make campfires and cook food with the campfire to fill both your food and water bars. The game also has a “heat” meters (I forget what it’s actually called), so in areas where the heat is intense, your meters deplete faster.

As much as I love the absolutely dire depiction of this landscape, barns full of the corpses of dead cows and the horrid sound of swarms of flies in that area, this game “runs like an indie game”. Of course, we need to break the stigma of indie = bad, but when I say that “it runs like an indie game”, people know what I mean.
It’s clunky, unresponsive and when walking over objects you can pick up, or being next to them, the prompt to interact with them doesn’t always pop up.
Failing that, the crafting is a little weird, and using things from your inventory. I made sure to double-check it wasn’t my mouse being fuck-y (I’ve had mouse problems in the past from my Razor Deathadder, despite my Logitech G502 being a sexy fuck, I’d never question your loyalty to me my sexy, sexy computer mouse.) When trying to craft things, the crafting inventory was stubborn to come up, I had to trick it into thinking I wasn’t going to click it to sneakily click it and make it open. When using items in my inventory, for example the drinking water, I had 3 stacks, I clicked to consume 1, and usually, I’d consume 2, sometimes I’d consume them all?

Nevertheless, I feel that this would be a good game to continue and actually go back to if the potentially game-ruining kinks were ironed out. Maybe a solid 6 or 7 out of 10 if it worked the way it should. Currently, with this, and also being another game that kind of bores me after a great initial plot then suddenly bland side-quests and not a lot of urgency, it’s looking about as dry as the drought they’re having.

List, please!

Pros:

  • The game works, it doesn’t crash and has no audio or graphical issues. (As far as I saw)
  • The game is survival, crafting, which is a genre I really enjoy. It focuses on food and drink and not much else, which keeps it nice and simple. The type of crafting that happens is similar to Raft in the sense that there is not a lot that you can craft, but everything that you do craft is almost essential to the plot/survival of your character.
  • Things that can be picked up that are necessary for survival sometimes require an additional tool to harvest them, adding another layer to the game focusing on maintaining and crafting tools to aid in your survival.
  • There are two strong emotional elements at the start of the game involving goats and your grandpa, both really set the tone for the game very well, and just how dire the atmosphere is. For a family friendly tagged game, this game is super bleak, and I love it.

Cons:

  • While the game technically works, it has a few bugs as mentioned. Double-using items in your inventory when you only wanted to use one, being really tricky to operate menus, and being generally tedious in terms of the UI.
  • While the game is a survival game, and elements that are used to make the game harder in some aspects are great, the use of the heat to make things degrade faster is a little too strong (in my opinion). In comparison to the resources that you’re given to survive, I really don’t feel that it’s too balanced.
  • Things being picked up for intended use when crafting would be nice if the option to do so came up when it’s supposed to and not on your 5th attempt rubbing your crotch against it. The action buttons for the game aren’t very responsive, in the way that they don’t always appear where they’re supposed to. Me being a person who loves to pick everything up, this is both annoying, frustrating and tedious.

Price: £5.19
Time To Complete: 2.5 hours
Achievements: 26
Cards: 5
Worth The Money: Honestly, for about £5, yeah, go for it. It’s only a 2-3 hour experience and while it has its bugs, it’s still a reasonable game.

In conclusion, this game is a game that I want, but it’s missing a lot of the polish that I would’ve hoped it came with before being released. If the game was Early Access, then I could forgive it a little more, but due to being a full release, it’s a little more inexcusable. Sure, patches can come for games regardless of EA state, but purchasing a game that still is wonky enough to impact on a player’s experience isn’t something you should expect of a final product.
It’s gritty and realistic, while also being a bit unrealistic in some parts. Somewhat aimed towards a younger audience, with character design and simplicity of playing and language, but somewhat not with its realistic portrayal of death and what comes with drought.

Hands down, a game that should be experienced, but with a fair mind that it is wonky as shit.

Zest Rating
4.5 Out Of 10. It looks delicious on the outside, but disappointing on the inside. Like a white dragon fruit.

The type of game that I love and wished to see in this new, unique setting, let down by a handful of experience hindering bugs and slow pacing after the initial deaths. Bugs making me consume all my water instead of just one canister really hinder gameplay, as the character has sloshing sounds coming from their stomach as they walk due to water overindulgence.

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”.
0

[LEGACY] Dark Dragonkin

Dark Dragonkin is one of the first games that I have had the pleasure of redeeming from Lurkit. Being one of only 4 games that I was eligible to redeem, I poured all my hope into the one and only Lurkit games available to me that didn’t look like a mobile game port.

This description does, however, come with my personal acknowledgement that, as a brand, Lurkit is better than Keymailer in terms of interactivity and user engagement. However, on the other hand, for smaller channels like myself, in comparison to bigger streamers, have such a limited choice on Lurkit due to access to games being behind an “Avg Viewer” wall.
On Keymailer I can walk up to any brand, developer, or publisher and slap a request on their game, believing that I compared to anyone else, will have a “good chance” of redeeming a game. Although this is the case, a lot of the time I will be “left on read” by the places I request from.
Lurkit on the other hand, pretty much has a 100% chance of being accepted if I meet the criteria, if I can actually find anything I want to review in the small pool I’m limited to. Although I appreciate Lurkit’s approach to allowing developers to choose their audience, I find that, given my smaller size, I am severely disadvantaged and limited.

Dark Dragonkin is a weird little game, top down, JRPG-like game that’s more about solving room puzzles endlessly than any actual RPG features. You go room by room, level by level, using 4 different characters with 4 different abilities. You have the Tank character (who is assumably female, love that) who can kick boulders out of the way and smash things, and the ability to use her shield to block attacks. Not only that, but you have the ninja guy who is great for backstabbing people and can jump over large gaps. Next is the druid-type who has the ability to turn into a fairy and fly through cracks in the walls, also having the ability to heal your team. And lastly, you have the mage who shoots fireballs which can light torches and kill enemies as well.

As said before, there is not really much of a story to this game, there is a little starting story to give your characters reason to exist and reason to be doing what they’re doing, but that’s about it.
From the start, what you do is go level by level, learning the mechanics of each individual and continue on through each dungeon.
I did play this game for roughly 50 minutes, so I almost met my hour quota. It’s not unbearable.
It’s a basic game with an interesting premise which I’ve seen similar things done before by Elmarion: the Lost Temple (but that was in 1st person, and you simultaneously controlled 4 characters with the numbers 1-4), and it’s not completely lost on me, it’s just a bit boring.
It’s a puzzle game and there’s not much else to it. There’s no fear aspect, tension, excitement, or anything of that nature, it’s completely about solving puzzles in an RPG-like fantasy environment.

Pros:

  • The game works, and has no audio or visual bugs.
  • The game provides a unique and intriguing mechanic to managing 4 people at one time. Making solving puzzles more appealing due to having to control more than one element within the puzzle-dungeon.
  • All the mechanics of each character are explained to the player, on how to use them and when is best to use them. Not much room is left for mistakes made via the game being stingy with its hints.
  • Despite the game being simple, a few puzzles did stump me a few times, but that was partially down to me having trouble keeping track of who can do what.

Cons:

  • While the mechanic is interesting, there’s not much else that really draws the player to stay for a while. The games’ music is repetitive and monotonous, and the control of four players is limited to singular, slow movement. I’m aware that this is a puzzle game, and I can appreciate that, but it’s RPG styled, surely that warrants a bit of excitement?
  • The game is a little weird with the walking and placement of things. It would’ve been better if the movement was gridded, or on rails. Walking forward moves the character forward 1 square at a time, leaning towards a more move-based puzzle game. This is due to the difficulty of aiming things correctly, the rock being kicked 2 pixels too far, the fairy getting KO’ed because I couldn’t fit her in the hole… I could go on.
  • Looping back to uninteresting, the game is nothing to look at visually. The characters are nice enough and are unique looking, but looking at the game itself as a whole, it does nothing to maintain my interest visually either. There’s a lot of empty space, both in the map and the black void outside the map.

Price: £11.39
Time To Complete: N/A (The only entry is me LMAO)
Achievements: 14
Cards: No
Worth The Money: IMO, not really. It does have 80ish levels, but there is no way I could withstand the game for that long to get my money’s worth.

In conclusion, this game is something that I’d like to see more of, just with more “umphf” or however you spell it. It is an interesting concept to have a puzzle game like this use 4 different characters that you can control separately. But as much as they spent a lot of time on making an insane number of levels, I think more should’ve gone into making it a fun-er experience.

Zesty Rating
4 Out Of 10. There’s a hint of flavour, but it’s gone before I can enjoy it.
A genuinely appealing concept for a game, let down by boring level design and no real excitement, tension, or fun really. It is a puzzle game, but due to the RPG skin, it’s misleading to those who think they’re here for an “adventure”. 80+ levels of the same song on loop, barren hallways and the call of the black void behind the dungeon map.

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. Not only that, but being more Lurkit-focused in my new era of streaming.

NOTE: This game is flagged as “Retry”.
0

[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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