Astral Breakers is honestly a game that surprised me. While not being squeaky clean, no bugs, no issues, it’s certainly a game I enjoyed right to the end. Actually, I am considering playing it on stream to showcase its highlights and lowlights. This game is, genuinely, not bad. Anything that is bad about the game doesn’t make it unplayable, unlike some games.
There is, however, a lack of a tutorial, you find this out on your own when you have no clue what you’re doing, and you exit the campaign to look at the controls. As for the side character, the annoying star, you just skip the whole conversation because who really needs to know the story, right? And if there’s no save… Find an hour and try to speedrun it, I guess. This game is not worth its full price, but even a small discount would be good enough for you to pick up the game and enjoy this little bubble pop game.
Pros:
The music fits the theme of the game, not too loud or annoying.
Nice clean game visually.
I got to pick which star sign I started as. (Which I’m sure is completely irrelevant to the actual gameplay.)
The game plays smooth enough, and playing against the computer does get harder as you progress.
Cons:
The stupid little star thing is annoying as heck, I know it’s just the cut-scenes, but I skipped all the skippable ones after maybe two levels.
Apparently, there is no save mechanic. I played the game for 0.7 hours and got from start to finish. I know there are people who don’t have enough time for that, so it sucks you can’t save your progress in the campaign.
There is no tutorial. You’d think you wouldn’t need one! I was joining colours up all happy until I noticed I had a stack of 10 of the same colour and was wondering why it wasn’t popping. Apparently, when the flashy bubbles appear, you have to press Enter to turn them supernova, so they fill the other side with balls.
Price: £3.99 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: None Cards: No Worth The Money: Yes, play it again and again.
Conclusion: Not quite cheap enough as I got through the game pretty quickly, I’d recommend buying when on sale but even a 25% sale would be good enough. It took about an hour for me to complete, which was probably because I had to restart it once due to the game not having a save feature. If you’re into match 3 games and are interested in giving a new one a try that has a slightly different playstyle, give this a go.
Zesty Rating 5 Out of 10
A game with an unexpected allure and purpose. It might not claim the top spot, but it carves out its own distinctive niche, offering a refreshing burst of vitality and vibrancy in an otherwise lacklustre gaming arena.
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.
There is not really a lot to complain about the game, despite the number of cons I will inevitably put at the end of this review. Most of them are because the game is a little price-y for only having 25 pretty short levels, which I’m sure scale in difficulty. It’s more or less nitpicking after the whole price check complaint.
The game is simple. You are squirrels and the enemies are squirrels. The premise of the plot is really just a “The Squirrels Are Playing Human Roles; Therefore It’s A Rodent Revolution”. Place your pieces, they fire. The enemy place their pieces, they fire. Place three of the same type of piece in a particular pattern, and they evolve into a bigger, more beefy or lethal piece. It honestly Plants vs Chess vs Match 3 and is actually great for what it is… But that’s all that it is.
If this was a mini-game in a larger game, then it would definitely have me head over heels for the game. Alas, it is not, so I would recommend to thee that thee fair gamers wait until thy game has been taken down a notch in terms of coppers, before picking this game up.
Pros:
The game works and does not crash or have any bugs or graphical glitches.
All music suits the theme and does not disrupt from the lore or the game itself, everything is suitable.
Some aspects of the story are genuinely entertaining and funny at times, watching squirrels quarrel about trivial manners is really ridiculous.
The unique take on the plants vs zombies vs chess vs match 3 fighting is actually rather refreshing. It’s almost nostalgic as it reminds me of an old game that I used to play, that I don’t have mind the name of.
The game genuinely does not look bad at all. They are very obviously 3D models of squirrels, no realism here, but it doesn’t hurt your eyes or soul to look at, which is something I can say has happened to me before.
Cons:
While refreshing, the plants vs zombies style battling is the only thing that happens. There is dialogue between battles, but that’s it. There are 25 levels of this which progressively gets harder, but that’s not worth the full price in my opinion.
The squirrels have just about the same dialogue every time. I’ve only made if halfway through, but Cortex is really fixed on capturing the bandicoot.
It teaches you early on that combining three squirrels makes a bigger and better squirrel, but it didn’t give you a little nudge for you to find that these big squirrels can combine into an even bigger squirrel. Maybe it’s expected, but my dumb face could’ve done with knowing it a little sooner.
There’s also no way of preventing your squirrels from becoming blue eyes white dragon, perhaps I want a nice row of them, to block the incoming bullets.
Price: £7.19 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: None Cards: Yes Worth The Money: Only When On Sale
In conclusion, it’s not the best game to ever surface upon Steam, especially for the price that is being asked of it. However, when it’s on sale, it’s a brilliant game to buy and play. An hour’s worth of playing in 5 levels, with about 25 levels in total. If you love puzzles, and match 3 stuff, then you can probably get a good number of hours out of this game.
Zesty Rating 5 Out Of 10 A decent jab at combining elements of Match 3 and Plants Vs Zombies. Squirrels take on the affairs of humans and battle it out in cute little uniforms. Not a horrible game, and has good puzzles, but not amazing.
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.
Starting off with the sequel to Alwa’s Awakening, what a joy and what a delight after playing the first game. From their game in 2017 to this release in 2020, Alwa’s Legacy is one of the games that I can say visibly and thoroughly improves from the first game to the second. Nearly every point that I had made about the previous game was cleared up, rectified, and that’s always a great thing to see. As if they’ve cleared up those things that so many complained about, it means they are developers who listen, and therefore, developers to follow and trust in. (Just don’t go AAA, please, I beg.)
Despite being a little late to the party, Alwa’s Awakening was something that disappointed me, it felt like a bundle of broken promises and pandering towards those who fall for nostalgia-bait (like the Star Wars Sequels). Despite all the problems still standing, it was a legitimate game and cared about its matters. It stood the test of time for another game to be made and was still good enough to get a mixed rating. It was always a surprise for me to pick up both Alwa’s Awakening and Alwa’s Legacy on Keymailer, I had just gone through my entire 2k “maybe-list” (steam wishlist) and had no idea what to expect. Playing Awakening later had me hesitant to play Legacy, I will admit. I remembered my draining experience (further worsened by playing another bad game beforehand, I will admit.) and put off playing Legacy as long as I could. Now, playing it, I realise how silly it was to just assume that those same aspects that I loathed from the game would carry over.
Because it didn’t. Hence, why this review will be a comparison.
“Most of the platforming requires pixel perfect jumping. I found the platforming some of the easiest to control out of all the games I’ve received from Keymailer, but it takes the happiness of finally having that away from me when showing me the platforms. Granted, not all the jumps are hazardous, death traps, but the ones that are the furthest away from the checkpoint always are, and it hurt my soul.” ~ (Alwa’s Awakening Review) My soul has been healed. This game still requires some amount of “pixel perfect jumping”, which I would say most platformers need for it to not just be a walk in the park, but in this sense, all the jumping and platforms made sense. Everything made sense. I didn’t feel as if I needed to lean to the side “IRL” (in real life) to make every jump, it was smooth and nurturing but wasn’t afraid to let you fall if you fucked up. The death traps and such are placed appropriately within great consideration of where your last checkpoint was, nothing too unrealistic at all and very considerate while still making it challenging.
“Speaking of checkpoints, Red Cap Zombie Hunter, eat your heart out because you have NOTHING on the placement of these checkpoints when it comes to distance. The placement overall of the checkpoints is actually fine and is nowhere near the randomness that Red Cap does with their haphazard tornado lightshows, but the distance is actually heart-breaking and forced me to recline in my chair for a few minutes on multiple occasions.” Red Cap Zombie Hunter…. Bro this is how you do it. It’s not about putting checkpoints, it’s about listening to criticism, taking it on board,and not having a hissy fit because people are finding problems with your game. Legacy took the absolutely atrocious checkpoint spacing of Awakening and improved TENFOLD on it. There was almost a point that I thought there were too many, but after unlocking new dangers I realised that checkpoints were necessary everywhere that they were. The game had become a lot more difficult, but at the same time a lot more achievable without throwing your hands up in rage, and it’s all due to the checkpoint placements.
“So if it wasn’t for the amount of dying I was doing sending me back, I also have to do A LOT of backtracking as well. I know it was very common in most older platformers, but with everything combined I genuinely felt as if I was losing the will to live, passing the same area so many times with nothing to gain from it. I only found out that there were quicker ways of going around things, like hidden walls/doors/ceilings/floors, yet I wasn’t to know as they looked the same as everything else!” Okay, so apart from the one place that I got completely lost looking for an old woman who was the key to me moving on in the game… Once again, such a big improvement. The maps are the same way, in which you could easily get a bit lost, or a bit turned around looking for the way you need to go, but it’s different! The rooms are a tad smaller, they look better, they matter just a bit more. Not only that, but the way that you traverse the map is a lot different too. Many rooms are “one-way” making you a tad nervous as you can’t get back, but then, boom, you get your little power to summon a cube out of nowhere, and you can get back now! Every room and direction is much more purposeful, with fewer dead ends. You can only wander down a route if you have the right powers to do so. No backtracking because you went the wrong way. I still haven’t found any hidden walls/floors/ceilings/doors but seen as this game was a lot more enjoyable than the last, I might go back to it.
“As if backtracking and losing progress to things wasn’t enough, your character is also very slow in comparison to big empty and expanding rooms with not much filling them but maybe one or two measly enemies which will be super stingy about their drops.” I’m trying so hard not to write vocalised expressions of satisfaction, just thinking back to the change on just how smooth the character is when walking… Your character is faster, smoother at walking, jumps are more responsive and rooms are not big and empty. Everything is fucking tight and fluid, and it’s lovely. I’m not so mad about enemies being stingy with heart drops because my slow-ass isn’t being grabbed as much any more, I’m not getting bored in a room, I’m not actually getting lost or having to backtrack as much. It’s honestly just “mmmmmmm”, as a change from one game to the other, it’s honestly a great feeling, almost as if I’m gliding with each step. (Not to be mistaken for the character being slippery when walking, the character is very much rooted it’s just the change is that blissful)
It’s honestly a great experience, and not just the game itself, but the rise from complaint ridden game to game I genuinely have only small complaints for. — I still don’t really know the story, but that also seems unimportant. — I got lost trying to find the old woman because I didn’t realise I could jump through the big orange column, as it literally looked like a wall. — I don’t understand if I can swim? Or how to swim? Or if it’s a special power I’m missing.
But besides that, take all my positive comments from the previous game, smack them in this review and add some sparkle. “The art style is cute and nostalgic with appropriate colour palettes, nothing is ugly or “meh” to look at.” This, but without my apathetic language. The colours are now popping, and while the style of the game is still very much the same, there have been some tweaks to let things pop so much more and be more attractive to the eye. “The music fits the purpose. It’s chiptune and 8-bit, and most soundtracks fit the appropriate setting they are put in. Boss battle areas seem to lack a little, but most of the others are great.” Likewise, the soundtracks are a lot better, but I still have the same gripe about boss battle tunes, sometimes they don’t actually exist at all, which makes me wonder if it’s actually a boss battle, but on the game goes anyway. “There are NPCs all over the map that all have some sort of dialogue (whether relevant or not) which really brings a bit more life to the otherwise empty feeling game.” The NPCs are so much more real now, they look better, they have better, more believable dialogue and just genuinely, overall feel so much better. Despite me still not knowing what the fuck is going on within the game, everything reads so much better and has me a lot more invested than what I was with the last game.
“The powers learned by the protagonist within the game (specifically the first one where you summon cubes) were generally surprising to me and a lot more refreshing than the generic powerups most games would give you to get around obstacles.” Same as above, I don’t think the powers have changed much since the last game (since I didn’t actually get all that far in Awakening) but it’s still such a refreshing premise on superpowers. Replacing your typical double jump with something different that allows you to mostly get the same desired effect. “Not all enemies are the same one. There are different enemies and also different variations of the same enemies that take more hits to kill. That and the bosses are interesting and while not outstanding or grandiose were still a nice bunch of pixels.” Oh my god, this, but so much more. Yes, the staple enemy to this game is skeletons, but within the first minutes of this game, it shows you so much more. Hidden behind a door you can’t open, in the first area with the old woman, are so many new creatures. You get hit with skeletons at the start, but later on, there’s flower demons, and evil flowers and moving statues and… It’s just great, and the art style switch I think was also key to making these guys look wonderful too. It gives you such a better grasp early on of how much this world has to offer.
Price: £13.99 Time To Complete: 9 Hours Achievements: 24 Cards: No Worth The Money: Maybe. It’s almost always on discount, however, so a definite yes on discount.
Overall, this game is so much better than its predecessor, and it strongly suggests that they listen to their fanbase/community/players. From what I can see in the reviews for this one, compared to the last game, there is so much more positivity towards the game and the developers and a genuine want for a third game. It’s not a game I would play on stream and something I’d pick up in my downtime (if I let such a thing exist) and complete casually in my own time. I recommend, if you have both Awakening and Legacy, play Awakening first just to make yourself love Legacy all that much more.
Zesty Rating 9 Out Of 10. A remarkable difference from the previous game. Improved in all aspects and actually a joy to play. Smooth characters and amazing game design. Diverse enemies and not frustrating to play, but provides a worthy challenge. Massive improvement.
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.
Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred.
I look forward to writing for you all again.
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!”
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,’”
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.”
“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.
Ratropolis takes the cake from Castle On The Coast from me for “best game I’ve received from Keymailer yet.” in the grounds that I am playing this game off-stream and really am enjoying it. Castle On The Coast is still by far a better game, but due to me getting motion sickness and Ratropolis being the extremely simple game that it is, makes for a super addicting, challenging but fundamentally easy game to come back to.
Ratropolis is a card battling game, where you use the random draw of the cards to build and upgrade your settlement, all while tower-defencing at either side of your settlement, fending off zombie rats.
You start off the game by choosing which leader you wish to play as (at the start, only being able to pick from a few due to you needing to win games to unlock them), each leader having different advantages to playing them and different powers which you can use to give yourself a boost mid-game. From here you can also choose where your settlement is located, there are a few areas such as the forest, the coast, and desert, each having their advantages and disadvantages.
From here you’re presented with your “town hall” and a few cards to start you off with, a few army cards, a few cheese cards (when played right give you money), labour cards and house cards. You gain money in the game via using cards that grant you money or from the tax that’s collected every 5 seconds in-game. You also have a limited number of mice (citizens) at your disposal, which you can increase and decrease with a good strategy. Every 15 seconds you can reshuffle your deck and draw new cards, the natural amount being 4–5 cards, reusing ones that have multiple uses and using up ones that are one use only. The game gives you the option to reshuffle a lot earlier than this but at the cost of your money, which the cost increases for every wave that passes.
The game is “over” once 30 waves of enemies have been defeated, from here you can choose to exit the game and claim your rewards to keep playing, despite there being no additional rewards. Things get excruciatingly tougher from there, no news is good news and everything that happens is bad. The game really tries to kill you if you decide to continue, to the point where I only survived an additional 5 waves after winning.
Each cheese costs 40 gold, but gives you 30 gold for every cheese in your hand when it’s played. There are 3 cards in hand, so the player gets 90 gold. But when only one cheese card is present, if the card is played, the player makes a loss of 10 gold.
This game is honestly a treasure, I’ve actually not found a lot wrong with this game, and I’ve clocked at least 16 hours into this game by the time I actually get this review done, and possibly by the time that the review comes out I could be at between 20 and 25 hours. Each game is roughly about an hour if you make it to around the 30 wave mark, so maybe I’ll have unlocked everything by then.
Pros:
The game works, there are no graphical or audio errors.
This game masterfully combines card battling and tower defence in real time in a way that forces you to be strategic but also fast thinking, the enemies come in waves all the time, and you can refresh your hand often with more money, making this game fast-paced and challengingly stressful.
The art-style is cute and cartoony, lending itself to the people centred in the game, the mice. When the rats come on screen, the cute art-style lends itself to making the rats oddly more grotesque.
Each leader has a completely different playstyle as they all have different buffs and super abilities. Not only this, but they also tend to have their own range of cards that appear too, making it feel like you’re running a different kind of settlement with each different leader.
The game produces different waves of different enemies after every 5 levels or so, throwing bosses, mini-bosses and different species of enemy at you. This adds a lot of variety and gives a feeling of progression.
Once you’d beaten wave 30 it’s not over! You can continue afterwards on the same game and the game will outright try to slaughter you, or you can exit to the menu and start another settlement with the same character to unlock more cards and in the same area to increase the overall difficulty.
So that you don’t have to click everything or scroll/drag around the settlement, the game has easy shortcuts to do things in game. Pressing [Tab] moves you to the latest event, like the merchant appearing or your cheese is ready. Pressing [Space] will reshuffle your cards and [R] will use your ability.
Cons:
The tutorial leaves a lot to be desired. I feel as if it taught me all the basics, but when it came to the rewards from the reward chest, I saw “Increase Leader Level” as one of the options and felt like the game had completely skipped out on explaining what that was. Also, a few other small things as well, like the bounty system (for the war leader) and the souls system (for the spirit leader) that were never explained or told where to look or what to do with it.
The game is a tad unbalanced, from waves coming too quickly sometimes due to the enemy number increasing every wave, so by the time you’re done with one wave the next is already attacking the other side. Some leader’s abilities are a lot more useable than others, the newest leader that was added not too long ago probably needing a tweak. The overall game is focused heavily on the RNG of everything, especially the cards, which will sometimes blow an entire game out of the water.
The interface of the game isn’t the best. I personally would like a tab I could pull up mid-game that show all my stats (maybe not pausing the game but slowing the time down to the same as when placing the cards), or possibly an easier function for moving your military mice around. What this game excels at in ease of play, it loses in the finickiness of everything else.
The settlement is initially set up like so; Town Hall-esque building, lots of space either side and then your walls. Once those walls fall you’re done for, you have to then sit and watch the enemy tear through every building between the wall and your town hall before smacking the town hall a few times, and it’s game over. I feel like the last stance should be at the town hall, give it some more HP, some walls, allow me to place troops at it or move troops to it. (Maybe I’m salty because I know that I easily had enough troops to finish off the remaining enemies, but they wouldn’t attack because they didn’t have a wall to defend, and I was on wave 30 and could’ve won, but I think it’s definitely a thing that should be considered.)
Price: £13.99 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: 46 Cards: 6 Worth The Money: To the people who really like this kind of game, yes, definitely. On the current sale at time of review publication (£9.79), it’s certainly something to be picked up by anyone.
Overall, this game has stolen my heart and my free time. Over the course of writing this review, I’ve gone and played it multiple times when I should’ve been writing more. Looking back and forth between the achievements and my game to see what I’m missing and what I still need to complete the glossary. It’s still being updated to this very day, which is why I think it’s done so well. If you’re interested in this tower defence, card-battling deck-builder, settlement building simulation game, I’d absolutely say it’s worth a look.
Zesty Rating 8.5 Out Of 10. A lovely little card-battling, deck building, settlement management tower defence indie game with a lot to offer to those who seek the challenge of not only keeping a colony alive, but keeping on top of tax, and amassing a formidable army. With new and interesting features attached to every different leader, and different ways to die in each different biome, this game is honestly a breath of fresh air.
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented. Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again.
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”.
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.
Surprisingly, this game was not one of those given to me by Keymailer, nor was it one that was sitting around in my Steam account for a thousand years. Through having a Steam Curator and actually making reviews, myself, on games for longer than I’d known the person I’d previously made review articles for their site, I’ve received games before. This does not mean it’s been at all successful, or I’ve been popular to be given games to. Chibi Girl VS Evil Zombie Dead is the second game I’ve ever been given via the Steam Curator Connect, and was given to me on the 29th of November last year. (The other one called, Zibbs – Alien Survival, was given to me on 22nd October 2020, and I still haven’t reviewed it yet for reasons, but will actually be doing eventually.)
I’d initially asked my previous reviewing partner if they’d like to review this game (as I essentially shared their reviewing website, they had an equal share of my Steam curator). They probably took one look at it, saying “uhh no, you have it.”. I more than likely promptly laughed afterwards expecting that response and said “Fuck it, it’s a game. It’s not really much of a waste of time.” Accepted, downloaded it and played it about 2 months after receiving it, punctual, I know.
Chibi Girl VS Evil Zombie Dead is an adventure platformer game where you, an unnamed, un-aged little girl is travelling across the zombie apocalypse ridden city in an effort to find her mother because “waaah where’s my mummy?” Despite being a child, the main character makes the slightly more logical decision of travelling across the city to find her mother instead of breaking down into floods of tears. Or even screaming and crying for her mummy like any other child would, getting eaten in the process.
She travels through a sort of semi-industrial in-construction downtown area, the introduction area showing you that you can drop boxes on zombies, jump over things and control elevators. Most of the rest of the game is JUST this, which is not inherently bad. There are a bunch of different environments, such as an actual construction site and a sewer level (because god forbid any zombie game avoid having sewer levels). The game does not get more complex in terms of what you need to do to progress. It does, ultimately, use the same factors to make the game progressively more difficult by stacking them on top of each other or making the puzzle a tad more maze-like, making you think about each situation a bit more.
As said before, there’s not much more to this game, and the only thing that drove me to almost complete it was the fact that it was seemingly easily done. Down to its simplicity, it was and is (up to a particular point where it seems it’s physically impossible by the game’s standards to pass it.) easy enough to finish. The graphics themselves were cute enough in a very amateur way, and the puzzles and things were simple enough but also challenging enough to keep me in it. A few times I did debate throwing up my hands and declaring the game broken, but that was all down to a few things that are actually easily fixed.
Pros:
The game has no game breaking bugs or flaws with audio.
It’s a simple side-scrolling platformer that’s easy enough to understand, but still provides an element of challenge for the player with it’s limited functions.
While the entire game is just platforming, between stages there are mini-games where it turns from a 2D platformer into a few different types of games, switching the flow and maintaining interest.
Depending on how much of an “out-of-the-box” thinker you are, it is possible to complete some puzzles a few different ways, which in my opinion makes it that tad bit better.
The goal of the protagonist is easy to follow, and what little story the game has is sensible and doesn’t take itself too far with being ridiculous. There are a few things that seem a bit out of the ordinary, but nothing too huge.
One of the few games I’m actually okay with the protagonist being unable to swim.
Cons:
The major thing with this game that almost had me quit the game was issues with graphics vs hitboxes. A lot of the time, my character would fail to jump at a gap and fall into the fire below. This was due to the hitbox of the ledge being shorter than that of the actual image. My character, while still being on the ledge, visibly was not on the code version of the ledge and would fall through the graphic. This wasn’t a major issue all the way through the game, but led to a few moments that almost stopped the playthrough.
There’s only one type of zombie. It’s a bit of a reach of a complaint, but there is no visual variety between any game’s zombies per level. All had the same ruined appearance, no sludge for the sewer zombies and no high vis jackets for the construction zombies. The variation between backdrops was great, but lacked at the forefront of the game.
The mini-games were necessary. If there had not been the mini-games, then I would’ve stopped playing the game a lot sooner. Other than the shift change between side-scrolling platforming, there is no other pull to this game apart from the fact I “knew” I could beat it and I enjoy platformers.
Another graphical bug that I only experienced a few times with the boxes. When you’re pushing a box, it can sometimes get stuck, on nothing whatsoever. It was prominent in one particular puzzle where you had to move a box to a puddle that was electrified by stray wires, jump on the box and jump over the puddle. That was my first initial thought, but the box stopped randomly, and I could not push it any further. Me thinking in “game logic” I determined that “you may not use the box in this area and must figure out another way around this puzzle”. After attempting another couple of ways, I tried the same way again and the box magically moved further this time, to my disgruntlement.
Price: £7.19 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: 4 Cards: None Worth The Money: No, only buy at a large discount. 65% or higher.
Overall, this game is actually kind of cute and semi-competent. A little simplistic, and it’s only redeeming features are the mini-game breaks between scenes and the way that it reuses the same mechanics in actually interesting ways to create new puzzles. It can sometimes feel a bit repetitive and broken, but I honestly never expected it to be as good as it was, to only have those flaws. It’s still not worth the price presented as, while the mini-games are great for what they are, the platformer doesn’t have a lot of content to warrant the price.
Zesty Rating 4.5 Out Of 10 Cute and simple platformer with other elements mixed through. Competent enough to hold its own, but not enough to hold it together. A little buggy, a little overpriced, and the only thing keeping me interested is the mini-games. How does this little girl know how to drive a car and a boat?
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changed to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.
Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred.
I look forward to writing for you all again.
I'm still hoping that the dev of this game is doing alright, they're one of the few that took a positive influence from the review. Once again, if you're still around, I look forward to what you have planned for the future.
…
Boobie Shaker? [How Do I Verbally Facepalm?]
Super Clown: Lost Diamonds was another one of those, “Ah, that will be super easy to play, looks like it has a low skill requirement and made with leftover unity assets from a dodgy car-boot sale.” While being one hundred percent correct in that matter, it did not matter. What is the use of a game if you cannot play it?
As I load up the game, I’m met with a massive spike in GPU in only the menu screen, this continues on through the entire game, but within the loading screen of all things. This should not be something that happens. Through most of my time gaming, I’ve only every experienced issues like this with indie games. The first of which being AffordaGolf Online, my first-ever shit indie game that brought up this issue. My computer specs are as follows: ASUS ROG Strix G15DK Ryzen 7 5800X
Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 7-5800X
Installed RAM Size: 8GB DDR4 SO-DIMM
Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX3070
Storage: SSD – 256GB, HDD 2TB
Why is this relevant? Well on Steam, it so nicely shows the required specs of your PC to be able to handle said game. For AffordaGolf Online, it seemed as though I was going to swimmingly breeze through the game and have no problems with my GPU whatsoever.
AffordaGolf
But no! AffordaGolf drags my GPU through the dirt and slaps it across the face, and with no option to turn any graphics up nor down, it fucked the rest of my stream for the day. Why, when I have four times the RAM required for indie games, does it shit itself so hard?
Fast-forward a lot of time to my first-ever reviews, grabbing indie games from Keymailer and just taking what I can get. JRPGs, platformers, side scrollers… Anything I can get my hands on that I won’t experience motion sickness playing, give me it all because I want it all. I came across a game called Rent’s Due: The Game (wow great name, where’d you find that?), and I ran into the same issue. Despite having over both the minimum and the recommended “everything” I am still suffering greatly for playing this game. Dragging my PC through the swamp like a horse for it to eventually sink into the mud as I cry over the sinkhole. Why? Why does this keep happening to me? Why is it only these indie games? And specifically the ones that I either can’t change the settings on or when I do “change the settings” it looks like it does fuck all?
Minimum and Recommended For Rent’s Due (Why is it so high tho lmao)
It became apparent to me after loading up Super Clown, that these indie games all have a few things in common, some of which I listed above. The lack of having an option to change the graphical settings, or when you do change the graphical settings, it seems not to have any effect. Another thing however that one of my chatters pointed out to me at the time was the possibility of the game being fully rendered, all at the one time behind the menu-page, not having the levels in a separate instance. When you load up these games, you’re running it all, all the game, all at the same time, even if you can’t see it. All of these games feature the same visual elements too, either low-poly or cheap looking assets. All with such shiny, shiny surfaces, with Play-Doh features and garishly bright colours and conflict with each other.
Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine is what these games have in common, and to a lesser extent, Unity as well. While giving people an easy way to make games and making it so “anything is possible!” and give everyone the keys to making games. I much have to agree with Ego when he argues with Guesteu that not just “Anyone Can Cook.”, in Ratatouille. He does continue to go on about how “…a great artist can come from anywhere…” and something about it being much more moving and recognisable if the artist has come from “humble beginnings” which is certainly true. It’s something, a lot of us who play indie games want, that’s why Stardew Valley and Unturned were such huge hitters. What we get landed with is mostly anything but that! We get people selling the first-ever game that they’ve attempted to make for £10+, when it barely works and hasn’t been play-tested enough by other people (Red Cap Zombie Hunter). It’s genuinely something that needs to be worked on a lot more before it can be worth any kind of money. We get people who know how to cheat the system, and will churn out games that have no effort in them whatsoever. Even turning to stealing assets and claiming them as their own, or taking template or sample games, not altering them and selling them as is! (Abscond)
Do you want to know what you see in the images I’ve used for this review? You see what the developer wants you to see. Of course, that’s what you always experience when you look at screenshots from a computer game on any platform. However, sometimes, heinous things can be hidden behind screenshots taken at a perfect angle.
When you’re looking at your lovely, smooth game that functions really well, what you want to do when putting your game on Steam is to take the best screenshots that highlight the most stunning parts of your game. The most important features or the most awe-inspiring shots that will make people say “Take my fucking money”.
When you’re adding a game to Steam, you NEED screenshots; otherwise it doesn’t let you post your game (as far as I’m aware). The developer for Super Clown needed screenshots, and as you can see already, the scenes look “okay”, they look “alright”, some are a bit “what the fuck is happening with the shading with those hills?” but it’s reasonable. This is because the rest of the game is such an empty shell. If you spin the camera around from any angle you can see the edge of the game, where the landscape falls off the map, where the ground has randomly been raised and haphazardly spray-painted the terrain. The water looks so out of sorts, appearing to be “super-duper-high def water” with the rest of the map looking like it was made from Magic Sand.
In the first-ever level of this game, you spawn on this plateau where there are at least TWELVE help signs that tell you what to do, or how to do things. For each one, you need to press the interact button but THEN click on the exit window. This is while the world is NOT paused, and you can be attacked by little COVID-19 spores that were placed very close to your character. Upon dying, you respawn, but the enemy positioning hasn’t reset, and they are right where they were before you died. On a tutorial level, I’m immediately thrown into a really shitty situation and with no reason for it. Random coins with weird placements that are probably to teach you what things are, with no way off the big rock other than to make a HUGE jump into the water below. This water being so shallow that I may as well belly-flop and get it over with. Now, in the Ultra High Def Water, and the inability to change ANY settings, my PC starts levitating with the amount of work it’s having to do and with the fear for my life I “nope” out of the game.
System Requirements For Super Clown
Above all else, reiterating the fact that indie games, of all games, should not be making my computer sound as if it smokes 60 a day. I have 7 Days 2 Die, and it has a lot bigger requirements and only makes my PC sound as if it has a tickly cough on the odd occasion. There is absolutely no need for this. There will be no pros and cons list because only the cons really matter when the vast majority of people will struggle to load this game up and play it, despite meeting the criteria.
Price: £1.69 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: 72 Cards: No Worth The Money: Even with it being on sale for £0.40, I would STILL not recommend this to anyone.
Overall… Yeah, just don’t bother. You probably wouldn’t be able to make it function anyway.
Zesty Rating 0 Out Of 10. A game that looked bearable, easy enough to play, and made with leftover assets. Broken, unpolished, and lack of quality settings for shaders had my gaming PC wheezing like it was winded. Avoid.
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changed to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.
Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred.
I look forward to writing for you all again.
NOTE: This game is flagged as “Retry”. Due to my PC being professionally cleaned recently, I'm choosing to give most games in which I have these “Computer sounds like it's dying from the flu” complaints another go, or at least another boot up on my freshness. Bearing in mind, these games were played extremely early on in my reviewing “career” meaning my PC should've been 100% sound to play these games regardless.
jinxlgamez
Leighann Paige
Doubtful Player 