Tag: Adventure

[LEGACY] Undertale

NOTE: There will be a few spoilers in this review. Not major spoilers, but more to do with the core functioning of the game and not to do with the story.
Mentions: EXP, LV (LOVE), Training Dummy, Nature of the game’s “life lessons”, all gameplay routes, that some characters die (but not specified which do), and a brief explanation of the first 5 – 15 minutes of the story.

Undertale is a debated masterpiece by tobyfox, spanning a fandom which has been thriving for years (7 to be generally correct) which still, to this day, sparks the creative fires of its fans.

The last time I played this game was years ago, getting through the game on a pacifist run and getting really fucking stuck on the dummy level. At that point, I didn’t appreciate the music as I was too busy getting super aggravated at the bloody cheating dummy.
If I went back to it now, I’m not certain how well I would fare. I’d possibly do better or there is the possibility I’d do worse, as over the years my style of gaming has changed considerably. (From being a COD and Halo player to Skyrim, Oblivion and Indie games).

Undertale is one of those games that tries to teach you life lessons, but has trouble deciding which life lesson to teach you, as there are so many relevant ones. But also, you are changing all the time as well, and what you consider to be the best decision may not be the same as what you once thought.
It’s not the most groundbreaking game in terms of “I did a wonderful thing, why did things turn to shit?”, no, no, that award goes to the first 15 minutes of The Captain and a few other games I’ve forgotten.

You can play Undertale one of three ways, kill everything in sight (Genocide), kill every minor enemy in sight and spare every major enemy that has a personality (Neutral), or reason with everything and kill nothing (Pacifist).

What the game does, is set you up.

It gives you the basics of the game. Kill things, and it gives you XP, when you level up, you increase your HP. The point that this game makes however is that it never told you to do those things, and further on you can discover that killing people and the creatures you come across is bad (believe it or not).
How bad? Well, if you go on the Genocide Route, one of the main characters reveals to you that EXP is an acronym for “Execution Points”, a commentary on how you’ve mercilessly slaughtered everyone.
Okay, that’s pretty bad, but when you get enough EXP you increase your LV, which is short for LOVE, that can’t be bad, right? Nah, bro, you still fucked up. “LOVE, too, is an acronym.” Apparently standing for “Level Of Violence”, you’re executing of all the innocent creatures and people, levelling up just how much of a violent threat you are.

The neutral path isn’t that much to speak of, characters make remarks about your killing of the minor enemies of the world (which are classed as their citizens, no matter how ugly they are or if they attack you). The major characters will not really be pleased with these actions and will make some, but not all, friendly interactions unavailable, especially with the lawful good-type character.

The pacifist route is probably as you would expect, and while I do love grinding for EXP and advancing my levels, knowing that I can be friends with everyone instead is just so heart-warming. There are honestly a few minor characters that have my heart, one in particular is apparently always made fun of for its appearance, and is crying in its sprite (not the drink, the character sprite). You can console it and tell it that it’s good-looking, and the fight will stop because you’ve cheered it up! Just getting your first little “Awh…” moment is always great.
Especially when coming to the big bosses as well, you will feel compelled to fight as each of the bosses (which is basically every main character) throws everything at you. You almost feel like turning around, saying “This bitch…” and using ye olde Attack button. Dodging every attack and appealing to their humour or trying to calm them down. Rinsing and repeating this a good few times can have you on their good side, and if you’re lucky, you could get a date with someone really great.

The story, as spoiler-free as I can put it, goes as so. You are a human child who, one day, when frolicking in the land humans occupy, fell into a deep, deep hole, onto a very convenient bed of flowers.
Your character, who is called Frisk, apparently, wanders around until she runs into a very nice lady. The thing about this lady is that she’s a monster (but she looks super cute though, so she passes), she nurtures Frisk and looks after them until your character starts wanting to leave.
The very pleasant monster lady, Toriel, panics and informs Frisk that they can’t leave. The only way to get back to the human world, above, is to go through the land of monsters, and they will try to kill any human they see.

Of course, the story can’t progress if you just stay, so you push on. Toriel isn’t having any of it, and this becomes your first battle. I’m sure she says something like “I can’t let you leave as they’ll kill you…” and makes reference to her doing it herself, so it’s less painful?? I’m not certain, I have a weird memory of that happening.
After you decide whether your child character kills the very nice Toriel or not, you’re out into the land of monsters.
From here you meet plenty of other monsters, minor characters, random chance enemies and major characters. Your main objective being “Escape”, but it’s so leisurely as while the monsters are struggling to survive underground… it’s such a beautiful and unique place.
You find out how the world of the monsters works and the lengths they go to pursue and catch you, their hopes and dreams, and their ambitions and morals. They see you as a morally evil being due to the stories that were told about humans and their traumatic history with humans. No wonder they’re hell-bent on killing or capturing you.

Make friends or enemies along the way, discover horrible truths about monsters in general and about others more specifically. Even the practise dummy that you were told to hit by Toriel has beef with you, and it’s super pissed. But the end of this game is not the end, as, debatably, the best feature of this game is in its replayability.

From what I could tell, this game does not encourage you to replay the game, but it has a strange tone about you from the start, almost speaking to you like an old friend.
But upon restarting the game, it’s immediately made known to you that the game knows you’ve restarted the game and will make commentary on your actions within the last run. Whether you killed everyone, killed no one or didn’t finish the game, it’s onto you.
It turns out that you’re still playing the game, the choices that you’ve made impact your next play too. Though this is a “new” playthrough with a “new” Frisk, it’s hinted at that this is the same Frisk. Time rewinds and Frisk has full recollection of what happened in the previous game, whereas only a few of the monsters do, the rest of them are reset and have no memory of what happened. Even dying if you killed them the first time around. I’m sure at one point, a character you killed in the game before said something about dying in a dream when you start a new run.
One of said characters directly calls you out on this with it’s always snarky tone, and one alludes to knowing, and depending on the route you take, will reveal to you how much they know.

This game is an expertly crafted machine.

However, the dark side of this game does not really come from within the game itself.
People can find this game unappealing if it’s not the type of game for them, they may find the game ugly, or uninteresting, which are all perfectly valid. (But how can you not enjoy the music? I listen to this on repeat unironically.)

The real problem with this game is the toxic fandom.
Real, great things come out of the fandom, going on from being completionists to lore hunters and theorists. Branching off that into discussing alternate universe versions of the characters and shipping other characters and art and… I could go on. Fandoms are wonderful.
But one thing that this fandom is the absolute worst for is toxic backseat-gaming.

We will look at the case of Markiplier (yes this is the second time I’ve mentioned him in my reviews, I used to be a gigantic fan, leave me alone) and his Undertale experience. Not the video itself, but the mass number of comments in his videos relating to the toxic fandom attacking him over his choices in the game.

Markiplier, of his own volition, heard about the popularity of Undertale and decided to see what the fuss was about. What he was about to learn is that the overwhelmingly positive feedback of the game had led to overwhelmingly expectant fanatics of the game.

“Undertale is just oozing with charm, so get ready for an adventure! Moreover, my friends would not shut up about it, so I had to see the game for myself!”

The Description of Markiplier’s Video.

Alas, he made the mistake of recording it and putting it on YouTube.


He managed to get a few playthroughs into the game before his choices enraged the overly expectant section of the fandom. Bear in mind, like in all cases, political, cultural, religious, fandom-based, the majority are usually never the “problem” when it comes to issues “created” by said group. Instead, it is usually those who shout loudest, the vocal majority that are usually the issue (as typically, the true majority of these groups want to be left to enjoy their shit in peace.)
The vocal majority of the Undertale fandom is comparable to the stereotype of ‘feminism’ used to denigrate it, or the many “Karens” used to justify why your cousin’s newborn daughter shouldn’t be called that. So, when people mention the “Undertale Fandom”, they immediately think about the vocal majority, instead of the true majority.

“Everyone was disappointed in the way I was playing it, and ordinarily I would just be like: ‘Y’know, I’m doing it my way. I’m gonna do this,’”

From a Kotaku Interview.

Markiplier only got two videos into Undertale before the pressure of the wave of toxic fans of the game had completely overrun his comment section. A combined total of almost an hour of video, and Mark reading out all the dialogue to make it entertaining, had meant he’d not reached the first town yet. Which, on a solo playthrough without an audience to entertain, would take a lot shorter of a time.
Mark did not get to really even experience the game, as something he’d done within the game, had made the toxic fandom so mad they had to harass him.

He gave a fan-favourite character… a “redneck voice”.
Oh, the humanity! How dare he give a character which has no voice, a voice that is the wrong voice! How is it the wrong voice? It just is!

Oh, and he’s doing the genocide route instead of being a pacifist and completely missing all the friendships that he could’ve made, and that’s not how the story is supposed to be canonically… Wrong! You HAVE to play it pacifist first so that you can feel the PAIN of killing everyone and tugging at your heartstrings, oh my goodness, it’s just so wrong.

There are more threatening comments than this. This one was the more “on the fence one” before it got nasty.

The wave initially overflowed his chat with a wave of insults towards the voice and the fact that he was killing things because it’s not the way that they believe the game was intended to be played.
There were then people trying to “reason with Mark” by pointing out why he should do the pacifist run instead. These explanations were overly detailed and spoiled a lot of the game for him.

“I’m not having fun making these videos because I know that no matter what I do, everyone will think I’m wrong.”

From a Kotaku Interview.

“I feel like I missed out on [Undertale] because people ruined it for me… Even though this game is wonderful, I feel like I missed out on it because people tried to control it too hard. And that’s a lesson to learn about something that you care for very deeply. Allow other people to experience it in the way that it should be because that’s what the game is about. That’s a lesson to learn for both the community that facilitates around Undertale and life in general in anything that’s not Undertale. Let it have room, to breathe…trust the people that you care about to find their own way, and make their own mistakes, and discover new things you may have never seen. It’s about trust, you know?”

~Markiplier at the second attempt of playing through it on a livestream.

It wasn’t only Mark who was affected by this onslaught of negativity, it had hit the entire side of YouTube that was playing the game the way they wanted to.
People who had newly started the game, knew nothing of what they were “supposed to do” and were going into it blindly, as you should with games.
Attacks were being felt on all fronts.
And you can tell how bad a fandom is when it garners the response of the creator.

There is more than this from TobyFox on the whole “bad fandom” thing, but I could only find the one where people were spoiling the game. Which is bad enough in itself, but not as bad as harassment.

I won’t go on for much longer about the fandom, as it’s honestly not something that’s wrong with the game itself.
It’s actually a sign as to how, when something is so good, that it brings together everyone to be so passionate about the game. It’s just unfortunate that they turn into mindless drones of “You’re wrong, this is the right way to do it.”
Tobyfox was probably one of the people who were most affected by it, seeing their creation as an instrument used to excuse why people are turning so sour against people who are only trying to enjoy the game.

At one point, I’m confident that TobyFox even reached out, on Twitter, to condemn this behaviour. If not, there was something said, as I remember the massive uproar from both sides of the community.

However…
In conclusion, this game is a subjective masterpiece. Not everyone will like the game, and not everyone will like certain parts of the game, be it pacifist or genocide. But this game, single-handedly, made such a significant dent that the impact of it will be felt until the next considerable upset.
A game with a core that powerful that it drove people to be toxic (who were probably already just as vain/toxic and needed something to latch onto) to passionate levels and seek those who were in the wrong. All that mattered to me was the tricky boss fights, the freedom to choose and the epic music (which I listen to unironically).

Zest Rating
9.5 Out Of 10. Golden Lemon, super Zesty.
This game is a look into the masterpieces that TobyFox can achieve. I’ve still not played deltarune and need to. Powerful enough of a story to give toxic fans a backbone to aggressively backseat regular players. The outstanding soundtrack and plot-loop is genius. I would stream the game, but we all know why I don’t.

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] Fisherman’s House

I am an avid lover of horror games, ever since way back in 2012 I found Markiplier’s first ever SCP – Containment Breach video, where he had streamed his very first interaction with the game.
Since then, I was a regular watcher of not just his content, but horror game content in general. Watching people play Cry of Fear and Resident Evil games.
I remember specifically going onto Wikipedia and searching “All Horror Games” and looking at each one of them on YouTube to find playthroughs of them all, because at the time I was limited to my Xbox and Xbox360 which never had “a lot” of horror games despite having things like Dead Space.

From there to here, I’ve had an obsession with horror games, having now got a PC and not just having the full extent of Steam to explore, but GOG and Epic Games Store (despite Epic Game Store being quite barren apart from their exclusives IMO). Not just that but sites like Itch.io and Gamejolt where people upload their creations, and you can access them for free most of the time.

So, when it comes to Keymailer, the moment I see a horror game, I throw myself at it. Fisherman’s House is no different to that, I threw myself right on that game hoping that by the looks of it, it was another Granny game. While I was correct, it was not only a complete rip-off of Granny while also completely failing to do what Granny did.

Fisherman’s House is a game where you don’t wake up in your own room, or your own house. Spend the best of 5 minutes at the start, looking for your torch because it’s very obscurely placed in your room, while being groaned at from whatever direction the “Fisherman” is.
From there, you will wander around the house aimlessly looking for what you can assume is a means of escape, finding various things such as a generator you need to get working, a sledgehammer, a crowbar, and a paddle. You need to figure out how all of these things fit together in order for you to escape not only the house but the vicinity as well.

The items used in the game are set out the exact same way from Granny, which is not too bad, Granny however has sequels where the mechanics and gameplay have been massively improved on. However, Fisherman’s House falls flat in the entirety of the rest of the game.
Where other games have tension and add fear, Fisherman’s House does not build on it, nor does it add any. You are pretty much always being chased when you’re close to the guy, walking slowly does nothing, nor does losing him in a loop, he will always know where you are when you come within a certain distance of him.
Once you realise that there is no consequence for getting caught, the game crumbles. I was caught for the first time very quickly into the game, as that’s how I deal with my games, the first try is always to test your limit, test the enemy and see what you’re up against. I was jump-scared, despite already knowing the Fisherman was running right at me, then left. The Fisherman just left me, exactly where I was, after saying (not literally) “Ooga-booga” in my face and running away. There was no sign of me being injured or my character suffering from acute shock that they needed to recover from, I was free to move again immediately.

Is this game possible to win and finish?
Yes, I do not doubt it. The A.I. may flip dramatically between extremely stupid and constantly on your tail, but this game is simple enough to beat. However, it’s more of a test of whether you can be bothered or not to actually finish it due to the lack of fun and fear.
Did I finish it?
No, after completing the game nearly halfway, I got extremely bored and leaned into my audience at the time questioning whether you can really die in the game or not, considering I seemed to have no consequence of being caught. The answer was “Yes”, I could die, but only after I’d been caught at least 7 times. At that point, after the Fisherman ran away from me after catching me, I ended up chasing him, to find he always “restarts” his behaviour in the same area, right outside the attic. Lazy A.I. programming.

Pros:

  • The game works, has no visual or audio bugs from what I’ve found
  • The starting atmosphere is genuinely unnerving, and the first sighting of the “ghost” Fisherman is actually really good for what it is.
  • The actual level design is okay, it feels like a believable house with lots of floors. Maybe not your standard British house, mind you, but I’ve definitely seen layouts similar to this in big American country estates.
  • The item placement being random gives a good level of difficulty to the game, not just being able to go to where you know everything is, proving a challenge that every instance of the object placement will be different each game.
  • The game provides loops and hiding spaces very frequently to avoid the Fisherman, letting you (in theory) manoeuvre around with ease.

Cons:

  • The atmosphere completely disappears, however, after your first encounter with the Fisherman, as nothing happens. You get a spook and that’s it. The atmosphere and the sight of the Fisherman does nothing anymore as the stakes are not high enough.
  • No consequences are where this game fails massively, as said before it takes away everything this game builds up and doesn’t even give you a slap on the wrist for being caught. I was caught at least seven times before I actually died. There was no “You have a boo-boo from being caught” or “You’re now so close to death that the next capture will make you die.”, absolutely nothing to hint to the player that being caught is bad, just endless chasing and jump-scares.
  • The A.I. for this game is horrible, as said before, once you got into the vicinity of the Fisherman he would “just know” you’re there. In a game like Granny, it made sense as Granny is visually impaired yet has enhanced hearing, the entire floor of the game either being covered in something like glass or twigs, or the floorboards being squeaky. Fisherman’s House offers absolutely none of this and resorts to just chasing you when you’re in range. This doesn’t cause as many you, many you problems as you might think however, as the Fisherman constantly walks into walls and even if you hide while he’s looking right at you, he’ll treat you as if you’ve just disappeared, even if you’re shining your torch right in his face from under the futon.
  • While RNG creates an amazing aptitude for challenge, it can also really take away from the game if applied incorrectly. Developers not taking into account what bigger items like the “generator” looking like in the same place as the crowbar, making the graphic glitch uncontrollably, is something that may have happened. Or maybe just the fact that items randomly move around the house to places you’d never consider keeping those things, but it’s a game, why should things make sense?
  • Some items are broken, I believe, as during my playthrough there were named items such as the “crowbar” that I couldn’t pick up, despite seeing in the trailer that you can utilise that tool. It seems to be a persistent problem within this game.

Price: £3.99
Time To Complete: N/A (Could probably speedrun it 10 min)
Achievements: 7
Cards: None
Worth The Money: No, as cheap as it is, I’d rather play Granny at the exact same price.

Overall, this game is a shadow of the game it draws inspiration from. While it does all the same things as the role-model game, it does them in a more lacklustre way, lacking in nearly every aspect in comparison. While I can appreciate that this is the developer’s first game (on Steam), Granny was also a “Dev’s First” game as well, and it’s significantly better at what it does, while also being the exact same price as Fisherman’s House. Fisherman’s House is just another one of the Granny clone games that come with the flood of the game’s popularity, as soon as a game/show gets popular you can sit back and shake your head while you watch the cheap rehashes and clones appear everywhere. This game is no different.

Zesty Rating
2 Out Of 10.
When a game becomes popular, you’re hit with a wave of copies and shameless rip-offs, this is one of them. Literally the same price as all the Granny games, just go and play that instead. Bland, boring and not scary after the first encounter. Just another RNG-based, find-em-all to find-a-way-out, best to be ignored.

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] Hidden Shelter

Back ages ago, I played a game called Pacify with one of my old buddies on her stream. She absolutely crapped herself, while I remained completely calm for most of the game. Also, under-reacting to the ghost chasing me, which led to my friend getting more of a fright due to “…oh” not being much of a hint of “We should run.”

Hidden Shelter immediately reminded me of this game, but not in a good way.

Hidden Shelter is a game where you and your 3 buddies are in a car driving somewhere, the car crashes and one of your buddies seem to walk off on their own into the woods that the car tumbled into. From here, you and your wuss of a friend (whom both of you have no “inside voices”) venture off from the wreck of the car to find the lost friend.
You come across a spooky mansion in the neck of the woods with its lights on and the door unlocked, the wuss character rightfully asks if it’s okay to “just go in without permission”, which your character swiftly disregards.
Entering the mansion, the pair think it’s a great idea to walk around shouting and yelling, eventually believing that there’s no one there and start walking around looking for their friend.

From here is where the game turns from interesting, with it’s rendered cutscenes and spooky atmosphere, and flops completely.
This game is now a mess of unhinted mini-cutscenes, which will not activate until you get close enough to an object. This in turn forces you to rub your balls on every possible piece of furniture and anything that looks vaguely intriguing to see if it triggers one. There was a point where I had been around the entire house around 3 times, looking for something, anything, and accidentally triggered a mini-cutscene that offered nothing to the game by standing next to a plain stool.
It’s, honest-to-god, bullshit.

The reason Pacify comes to mind when thinking about this game is due to the fact that every door in this damn mansion is locked. Big Wuss actually comments on with “Why would you lock every door in the house you live in?”. I wonder why, Big Wuss, I wonder why…
Not only this but everything is such a needless trek, why oh why do I need to find this key, to open this door, to find another key which opens this door, to find another key to open this door which helps me un-barricade another door which leads back to the main room?
In Pacify, it was fun, okay? In Pacify we were being chased constantly, and the key finding was a race of sorts. Finding the keys was crucial to our survival and if one of us died during finding the keys, we had to be so much quicker to find the rest! If we slacked on finding the living room key which allowed us to find the bedroom key, which in turn led to us finding the attic key which gave us the basement key, we wouldn’t be able to open the door to the room in the basement that allows you to revive! It was the rush, the panic, and the intensity that made Pacify work for that stupid “domino of keys” formula that it used.

Hidden Shelter has none of this. It has no presence after the first few scenes and atmosphere changes.

There are encounters with a ghost, of sorts, which makes use of the 3D objects which have gravity by throwing them at you or using its weird wind powers to make things get in your way as you run.
My first gripe with the monster, or whatever it is, is that it’s odd wind power is complete bogus. I’m pretty sure that on death, the physical objects that get thrown around do not reset, either that or the peculiar wind powers randomly chucks things around meaning that whether things get under my feet are not is just luck.
This causes me to get caught a lot, but being completely out of my control. The lighting in the game is terrible, so I cannot see if anything is actually on the floor to trip me up, and sometimes I can’t see where I’m going. But, what fucks things up the most is that instead of doing the regular thing that games do and let players make their own mistakes, if the player goes the wrong way during a chase they are immediately caught.
For example, in the kitchen scene, I was chased by the monster. I ran out through the corridor and ran into the dead end as per usual out of panic and general… Directional confusion… Correcting myself and running out of the right door, I spin around to try and quickly close it to attempt to slow the creature down (completely disregarding Big Wuss’ safety). Not thinking “I need to run outside because the front door will still be open.” because since when do horror games just let you run out the front door? I run for the stairs to try and maybe find a closet, so I can hide Ao Oni style, but as soon as my foot touches the stairs I get pulled into the mandatory death cutscene.
Okay, so perhaps my fumbling in the dead end is what fucked me up there, okay… Let’s try again.
Next time, I went straight out of the right door and went straight for the stairs. Mandatory jumpscare again.
I tried this a few times, believing that it was me, and if I was just fast enough I could probably make it. It was only when someone in my Twitch chat at the time suggested that I ran outside instead, I actually survived. Not only was this monster not fast at all, but even after tripping on boxes and then waiting in the hallway to test the theory, slowly activating the stairs’ death was it clear that, yes, this is indeed bullshit.

There is obviously much more to this game than what I played through. After wandering through the entire house, clicking on all the doors to find that 3/4 doors gave me the “This Door Is Locked” response, the rest having nothing to say at all, I’d rather not continue. That and that I had to quit the game due to what I found was a checkpoint trap. The ghost had chased me into a room (which was scripted, as if you try to run the wrong way then you get “auto-deaded”) and you’re given no clue what to do in the room but “escape”. Doors were bugged closed from what I could tell, and there was no other way to escape, so I had to quit the game.

Pros:

  • The game works, and has no graphical or audio bugs from what I can tell.
  • The game is fully voice acted, which adds a nice feeling of effort put into the game, which most indie horror lacks (from what I’ve played recently).
  • The game tries hard to convey the feeling that Amnesia brings with its puzzle-like environment and room unlocking.
  • Big Wuss (secondary character) addresses a lot of the common horror tropes in his questioning of the mansion and the main character’s actions, which is honestly a big plus for me, as I love it when idiotic shit is called out on.
  • The atmosphere at the start of the game is eerie and actually draws you in, especially with the addition of the rendered cutscene, which adds some intensity as well.

Cons:

  • Despite having no graphical or audio bugs, the game does suffer from game-breaking glitches and game-cues not activating. A part I got soft-locked in was exiting through the conservatory door in the kitchen, not allowing us to leave. Due to the horrible A.I. pathing the monster couldn’t figure out how to get round the corner of the corridor.
  • Effort and trying your best to draw inspiration from games is something I can admire. However, despite all the effort put into a game, it doesn’t save it from falling flat at the hurdle it tried so hard to create and jump over. This game tries to feel like Amnesia (I’m not sure if it drew inspiration from it or not, but it’s the closest I can relate it to) but fails considerably at the start of the game. Lost is the atmosphere and intensity with the meaningless wandering, unthreatening monster and lack of actual puzzles.
  • All the notes that are scattered around the mansion are completely incoherent and do nothing to service the story, atmosphere, or the mood. They don’t help progress anything, offer any combination to locked doors, provide hints, or even really provide any interest whatsoever.
  • The A.I. pathing is terrible. When you’re doing maths in school, you learn about a certain way to calculate things according to maps, distances and real life where there are buildings and walls you need to walk around, completely erasing A to B values. You need to maybe need to include C as well if you need to turn a sharp corner or additional other points if you’re avoiding something. The monster however (from the best I can tell) still uses A to B tracking, leading to it walking into walls as it tries to follow you. Going as far as getting itself stuck if you’re fast enough to run down a corridor and turn a corner.
  • The lighting is terrible… I wouldn’t list this as a graphical issue/error as I believe that it’s intentional, but god-damn, things are so dark, and you hardly have any light. Sometimes when Big Wuss walks up behind you, and you see him out the corner of your eye, it’s like an oil/tar rendition of the blob monster.
  • The optimisation of the game is terrible as well. When starting up the game I almost cried a little as for the past couple of times I’ve been reviewing games it’s been sucking up a lot of RAM due to unoptimised shaders. The menu was the worst by far, taking up a lot, but when starting the game it got better. However, I still had to lower the settings a bit due to me running on a lovely 30fps with full quality despite my fully capable PC.
  • The game gives you no room to fail naturally, if you go the wrong way within the game you’re given a game over jumpscare immediately. It makes sense for JRPGs maybe, but for a game like this (where we’ve already walked up and down that staircase 4 times trying to figure out what to do) there is no justification for it. The A.I. is weak, yes, but at least let the player wander around with the blaring chase music wondering where to go until they get caught or, even better, realise they need to leave the building.

Quick note: all images that I am using in this review are all areas that I have seen, but also picked to highlight just how bad the lighting in this game is. There are better pictures of this game (mainly the one used as the very first screenshot the player sees when looking at this game on Steam to create the false illusion that the game will always look like this) which I will show, but the rest/most of the game just looks like all the pictures above.

I tend to always use only areas that I’ve seen in the game to use in the reviews as it, sort of, concludes my experience. My experience was infinite darkness and weak jumpscares.

Price: £2.99. Previously £7.19
Time To Complete: N/A
Achievements: 12
Cards: None
Worth The Money: If the game worked, possibly. Because it soft-locked for me, no, not at all.

In conclusion, this game is a product of what happens when two inspired devs take on the role of making a big horror game with inspiration from big games titles and bit off more than they can chew. I feel bad saying that, honestly, but it’s a case of too much being focused on one thing and not in another. A lot of time and effort spent building the area, flooded with ideas and then creating that surprisingly great cutscene, to then flop on the execution. A restrained gameplay, a weak atmosphere after all pouring their work into building it up, and a drab way to execute initial puzzles and consecutive door unlocking.
At its price right now, it would be great for the more lenient and less critical horror game enjoyer to play, but due to bugs and game soft-locks, I’d tell most to avoid it.

Zesty Rating
2.5 Out Of 10.
Apples that you bought last week but never touched, but now you need to eat them because you bought them.
A game with effort from a small dev team. Inspired from bigger games, but lacks at the execution. Bad A.I. pathing, lighting and lack of atmosphere after the initial introduction. I honestly prefer collecting coins to collecting the keys to all these locked doors.

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] 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] 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”.
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[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”.
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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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[LEGACY] Amazon Rush

Amazon Rush is an endless runner game, created at the peak of runner-game-hype, along with games like Subway Surfer and the like. Judging by the game itself, it’s honestly hard to tell whether it was an honest attempt at recreating the magic, or a blatant attempt at grabbing from the pockets of people who wanted to try something new.

This review will be more of an argument with what the developers describe the game as, so I will be listing the pros and cons first.

Pros:

  • A decent game in itself when it decides to work.
  • The game is competent enough to have AN objective.
  • The game provides a singular challenge for a singular cosmetic.
  • The game is not so lazy that it doesn’t have power ups.
  • Nice start screen and game over screen.

Cons:

  • The main character is bland and forgettable. There is nothing unique or interesting about it.
  • The RNG for which blocks spawn is absolutely atrocious. Blocks can spawn inside each other and make the game freeze because it doesn’t know what’s happening, or they can spawn too far unreachable for you to make it with power ups.
  • The moving background is only one picture long, so it’s the same image looping over and over again. A second image would’ve been good enough to just give it a bit more sustenance.
  • Not unique in any way.
  • Jumping mechanics have you float and then suddenly drop, making it almost impossible to predict where you’re going to land.
  • Dull with no rewarding aspects.

“Enjoy the Unique World of adventure and challenges”.
This game is not unique, the only thing that’s even close to being unique is how bad it is, but since the greenlight is non-existent it’s “unique-ness at failing to be a decent running game” is almost snuffed out.
The main character is forgettable. The background is so plain, bland and lazy that you swear you’ve seen it somewhere before. The power ups are indeed somewhat unique, but they’re always just out-of-reach so that if you go for them, there is no way to survive.
The “Aboriginal” costume is actually the most unique thing about this, not for the promise of costumes as other games have done it better, but just for its design, which was obviously the “challenges”, the dev was talking about.

“…with lots of thrill and fun.”
Fuck off.
Thrill and fun are different and are achieved in different ways. This game is in no way thrilling, and it also is in no way fun. The difference between this, is that this game has the potential to be fun and captivating like most runners want to be as runner games are all about replayability. If the only thing you have to offer as a reward is 75,000 coins away and there’s nothing in between and nothing after that, players just don’t latch on.

“This running game is beautifully designed…”
There’s no problem with this statement apart from the statement itself. The background design is tolerable, the character design is better than expected along with the costume, and the info screens are a nice touch with the bloody… arrows? Spears? I can’t tell what they are, but they do fit the Amazon theme.
However, just all-out claiming that this is beautifully designed is a lot of bullshit, and we can all see that.

“…awesome sound effects.”
Yeah, sure. You picked the right ones. All sound effects were appropriate. Congratulations.

Price: £0.79 (believe it or not, its base price used to be £2)
Time To Complete: N/A
Achievements: 124
Cards: No
Worth The Money: No. The game is broken, it can literally crash your Steam Client.

Do not buy this game.
If you wish to buy this game, buy it when it’s on sale. 50% or above sale, and even at that it’s still not worth what you’re paying for it. At this point, it’s more beneficial for you if you buy it off a dodgy website, get hacked, have to freeze your account then claim it back again just to get the game.

Zesty Rating
1 Out Of 10. You’re being the victim of that weird trick people can do where they eat a banana, but then put the skin back the way it was to make you think there’s still a banana there. There’s not.
Describes itself as unique and beautiful, maybe that’s what it’s mother’s told it. Awful Runner game, no reward aspects, only endless running and no gain. RNG breaks the game and Steam Client. Don’t buy this one.

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

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