Tag: Female Protagonist

[LEGACY] Lake

Lord bless Keymailer and their forever extensive library of new and upcoming games, waiting to be requested and played by the unsuspecting gaming influencer. With Steam and the Greenlight function being taken away and a mountain-load of shovel-ware sweeping into the marketplace like a landslide from a landfill, it’s hard to request things from the site and not dread what you’re getting into.

Due to its overall look and information, Lake was one of the more promising looking games. It was also one of the few games that provided a different “please read before requesting this game.” This uniqueness before even starting the game or even being accepted to play it was pretty fresh.

The game itself is exactly as you see it. You are a woman who is taking over from her dad as the local postman, which is giving her a needed break from her work, too. It’s a delve into her past, as it’s her returning home to the town she used to live in by a big, beautiful lake.

There’s not much else to this game that I have experienced, which is not a bad thing.

The game is simply experiencing this twist in a person’s life through delivering mail around the lake each day, with different dialogue options leading to better/worse relationships with other characters and possible romance options.

Pros:

  • It’s a game that works. And it works really well.
  • The stylisation of the game is a mix of low-poly and not, which does give the land a unique aesthetic. While not looking super realistic, it all blends in really well together and paints a nice surrounding.
  • 2 (As far as I’m aware) romance options, one with a male character and one with a female character. Film Nerd Chick FTW.
  • All music in the game is played through the “local radio” in the post-van and is actually real, original music recorded for the game, which really ties in that close-knit community vibe.
  • All characters feel believable and the dialogue is not clunky or unnatural. 
  • Whether intentional or not, you can power slide with the van.

Cons:

  • Due to the original music, you do have to email the devs of the game with the link to your VOD/Video to make sure you are not DMCA/Copyright struck. It’s a thoughtful thing to do, but could be tedious if multiple videos have to be made.
  • There is no run function. (Similar to Phasmophobia) The movement speeds are “saunter” and “walk normally”. I know the woman is having a holiday by being there, but I’d like the faster speed to be “That awkward jog where you need to be faster but don’t want to put effort into being faster.”
  • The two relationship options (that I have found) are a wonderful Film Nerd Chick and Hermit Paul Bunyan. For meeting Film Nerd Chick, it’s such a natural progressive flow (AND REALLY FLIRTY), whereas meeting Paul Bunyan you’re hit with a lot of guilt-tripping and pity-partying. Which, when talking to other streamers playing the game, also put them off a relationship with him. He seems like a super chill guy, it’s just shit that every dialogue option starts with you delivering bills to him, and you’re just forced to feel guilty about it.
  • You can’t tell your boss/co-worker who keeps calling you asking you to do work while you’re on holiday to “fuck off”.

Overall, this game is a great game if you like enveloping a story via trivial means, like Power Wash Simulator but better. You learn a lot about the community via delivering mail to them and accepting some odd jobs or such from them while you’re at their houses. Meet old friends, old neighbours, and just chill in the hometown you grew up in. 

For me personally, as much as I am invested in the relationship with Film Nerd Chick, I do find the gameplay super repetitive and would probably struggle to play this game if it wasn’t for that specific relationship. However, it is one of the few games from Keymailer thus far that I can safely say I’d continue to play after trialling it.

This game, however, does deserve a place in the spotlight due to having such a well-crafted and believable little town, which completely carries across the feeling of quaint and homely to the tee. 

So while the game style may not be for everyone, it doesn’t mean that it’s a bad game at all and is certainly not a bad story that’s being told. If you can pick this game up from keymailer or fancy paying £15.99 for this game (which I, personally, would wait for a discount on) give it a decent try. Power through some posting to see if the storyline is worth the slog and share your thoughts about it as well.

Price: £15.99
Time To Complete: 7 Hours
Achievements: 10
Cards: None.
Worth The Money: Yes and No. Having 7 hours worth of playable game is certainly worth £16, but the game is too repetitive and chore-like after a while.

Zest Rating
6.5 out of 10 ~ Fresh-Tasting
Back to hometown aesthetics, postwoman romance simulator. Driving and posting every day isn’t my thing, but the relationship dynamics are worth staying for. She’s as much of a gossip as my dad is, and he’s an actual postman.

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] Alwa’s Legacy

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented. 
Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred.
I look forward to writing for you all again.
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Action Rush

So, here we are, in Action Rush. We start at the precipice of a rocky, floating island after just having come out of a very India Jones looking temple-like place. Flaming torches on stone pedestals, huge towering columns and dark shadowy corners. Completely contrasted by the protagonist, the woman, this woman that we are given looks so damn improper that not only am I questioning why I’m here playing this game, but also questioning why this woman is even here.
Apart from that, the next things you see are big floating words on the edge of the cliff saying to follow the path.

Then nothing.

None of the images in this article in any way represent what the game actually looks like. Some aspects are the same, but most of the trailer and screenshots are misleading.

This is the only “tutorial” you get. It doesn’t explain to you that the cards that you collect along the way are unlockable abilities, and it doesn’t explain the little hovering sword things are that you’ve reached a checkpoint which saves your progress. I only found these things out after I went back and got the card after a few times failing the endless jumping puzzle because you NEED the double jump this first card gives you. (Not to mention you can jump while stationary which, as you would expect, makes you do a stationary jump. But use Shift while in air, after jumping stationary, you will start zooming “forward”)

Nevertheless, even from looking at these screenshots provided, they still adhere to the fact that this game is a big CTRL+C, CTRL+V spam.

There is nothing much else to say about this game. The music isn’t dramatic, so it doesn’t provide that necessary feel of a race, and all the assets you jump on being copy-pasted and no variation to it whatsoever, it honestly puts you out of the game.
The second level, however, is a whole new bag of beans with “fall away floors” that don’t work half of the time and no clear guidance as to which way you’re supposed to go. The game generally being a mess, I just decided to not even further progress with it.

That and all the assets are floating mid-air, there was absolutely no effort to make the levels look like believable areas. It’s literally just floating assets.

Pros:
– The game itself from a “distance” looks nice enough.
– The music is equivalent to static noise or ambient song, enjoyable enough for some.
– Asset placement is clean, there are no graphical errors or glitchy looking objects.
– All Controls Work

Cons:
– All assets within the game, no matter how well-placed or how suitable the game looks from a distance, does not make the fact that the game is one big copy-pasta of the same elements. Playing the game for the short amount of time that I did make me see it so quickly. It’s the same asset, over and over again. Even if they’ve managed to make it look different, it’s still the same asset!
– There is no sense of “Race” or urgency, the game literally has the word “Rush” in it yet gives no reason to apart from a timer with too much time on it.
– DESPITE looking fine, the actual hitboxes for the game are particularly bad, and some aren’t even set. Glitching your character through some platforms or just being “false platforms”.
– The woman is super out of place, and dances? With Q and e? It’s so improper and there is honestly no reason for the emotes like dancing.

That, and look at the background. It’s such a cheap attempt at creating a scene, but it actually just stops at the horizon and is nothingness from there.

In conclusion, don’t buy this game. It has no soul whatsoever due to the lack of the effort on the dev’s part to make something more than just a few things you can jump between. It’s so cheap. Insanely cheap, and I’m not making a remark on the price it is, once again it’s the effort.
If you’re super enthusiastic about 3D, 3rd person jumping platformers, go on and play it. I do warn you, you’ll hate yourself for it.
I pray that you’re one of the silly people like myself who already had this in their library due to buying game bundles from sketchy websites. Don’t actually go out and buy this, as buying games like these enables people to think they can make a quick buck from these (un)passion projects. You’re honestly better off playing Cloud Escape.

Price: £2.09
Time To Complete: 36 minutes.
Achievements: 35
Cards: No
Worth The Money: No

(I’ve done it, I’ve found the old image they used to advertise the game, which better encapsulates what this game actually looks like.)


Zesty Rating
1 Out Of 10. You are Snow White, and this is the apple offered to you.
Play any other jumping platformer game instead. By far one of the worst ones yet due to the lack of effort and overabundance of copypasting assets. Not worth your time or your money. No challenge, no love and no soul. Better off playing Diamond Hands: To The Moon.

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[LEGACY] Alwa’s Awakening

This instance for me was a first from Keymailer. What I’d done was go through my entire Steam Wishlist (Over 2k Games, it’s a story for another time) and requested EVERY KEY that I could for all the games on my wishlist. This took mostly the entire night until 4am in the morning, provided that I’d also watched my friend’s stream until midnight that night, and was also being distracted by everything and anything.
Lo and behold, I get not one but two games from the same dev, both being the same franchise and being from as early as 2017.

Alwa’s Awakening is the first of two games, the other being Alwa’s Legacy, which I am yet to play and review, and should promptly be doing it this week. From looks only and the trailer, it looks to be a nostalgic revisit to the old 8-bit platformers coming out nearer the end of the 8-bit era, graphics and movement promising to be an absolute gem and reprise many people’s memories.
I was met with this, but also met with the other thing that happens when I go back and play old games.
“Hmm, something’s not right. Something just feels a little off, like something is missing. It has everything I knew it would have, but why don’t I enjoy it?”
But this isn’t an old game? It’s not something I played in my childhood, yet it comes with that anticipated nostalgia haze, with the emptiness ensuing.

You are this fabled character that’s supposed to save this village/town/city of Alwa. I read the plot and one part said city, but the image was literally like 10 houses, and it threw me off, I think. You go through a mass dungeon crawl where there are enemies everywhere, destructible objects and permanent powerups that unlock more sections of the map for you to explore and conquer.
It gives exactly what’s promised and delivers exactly what’s expected, but why do I feel so let down?

Well, I think after going back to the game after the stream and literally meditating on it, which you’ll never get me to do for anything else, I’ve put my finger on it.
Most of which are things that other games do, but I think the overall combination of these things are what brings it down to a boring, grindy, flavourless halt.
So from here, instead of doing the pros first, here come the cons.

Cons:

  • 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.
  • 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 overall arrangement of the checkpoints is actually acceptable, and is not as chaotic as the haphazard tornado light show by Red Cap. However, the distance is actually heartbreaking and forced me to recline in my chair on multiple occasions.
  • 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!
  • As if backtracking and losing progress on 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 could probably think of more, but I honestly think that’s enough to rag on the game to make you have a second-hand experience of what happened. I have hope for playing its successor as it too also has a good amount of positive reviews. I’m hoping the next game will have expanded on these Pros I now have to list to keep the review balanced.

Pros:

  • The game works. 💖
  • The art style is cute and nostalgic with appropriate colour palettes, nothing is ugly or “meh” to look at.
  • 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.
  • 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 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.
  • 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 spectacular or grandiose, were still a nice bunch of pixels.

This is honestly a review that I did not want to do. When I look at this game from afar when not having played it, I see what I want. An enjoyable look back on a previous era of gaming, brought back into the modern day, but when played it brings back all the same problems that early day gaming had with it. While £6.99 is a great price for a game with 5 – 10 hours of playtime it’s honestly, mostly filler, retracing your steps, taking the wrong route that leads to nowhere, being punished and not liking it.

Zesty Rating
4 Out Of 10

A great-looking and sounding game, but that’s about it. Has everything about a game from the 1980s including all the unintuitive and punishing game design. Nostalgia-vision encapsulated, leaves you tired, sapped of your enjoyment because it’s not as good as you remember it being, despite never having played it before.

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] 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] Apsulov: End of Gods

Apsulov: End of Gods was a game that I was really excited to play. It was one of the first games that I’d received from Keymailer that actually looked worth the price that it was. Looking like a finely polished, first-person adventure which had very different elements to it than previous games. It struck my interest and when I actually received the game, I was genuinely shocked and excited considering that the game was released in 2019.

You’re dropped into the game with a very cranky-ass GLADOS repairing you and shouting at you for being a failure. This part of the game sets up the basics, walking, movement in general and interacting with things. Not only that, but gives you the tone straight away. Lulling you into a false sense of security with being nice, and funny, and then literally screaming at you for being a failure for reasons you can’t understand as the player. (which genuinely triggered some fear for me, a bit of trauma, but we okay). From there you escape into vents, run, and get sucked into a giant, glow-y, magical butthole then transported to the Ashlands where you’re attacked by Demodogs, they eat your arm, but you’re then rescued.

The man who rescues you infuses you with a weird robot arm, which you can conveniently charge up with green ion cells lying around everywhere. With said arm, you can unlock doors using biosignatures which you’ve stolen from the hands of dead corpses. Not only that, but you can also use it to force push people and things, and that’s how you solve a lot of the travel-based obstacles.

Honestly, I couldn’t really tell you what the plot was. I have no idea if I just wasn’t listening, or if I’d zoned out because I was bored, or if it was actually given to me. In my head, all I had was “Zap, Zap, out of battery, refill battery, Zap, Ooo that looks cool, Zap.”
Which is not an entirely bad thing.

The game tries to combine numerous things together, and as much as I enjoyed the game, I think that is its downfall. Once I stopped to breathe, or got tripped up on an obstacle I couldn’t solve it hit me, I don’t really know what’s going on.
This game is supposed to be horror, but I, personally, don’t find it scary at all. There was only one good jumpscare/scary moment, but I forget what it was and where it was.
The game also is supposed to be a mix between Sci-Fi and Viking themes. The humans within the game have “found Asgard” and therefore found items associated with the gods of that realm. Artefacts from the one that is known for raising undead, now there are undead everywhere. It’s a classic DOOM story, humans got too ballsy with their inventions, found Hell and were like “Yeah we could use Literal Hell to power our machines.” but instead it’s all the nasty Viking gods.
After DOOM, looking at this game, you could replace the fact it’s Viking gods with anything at all, or take it out completely. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but I’m more interested in why GLADOS is a dick because this robot thing is apparently sentient and really fucking pissed off at me for reasons I still don’t understand.

Pros:

  • The game works, no major graphical errors, bugs, or audio glitches.
  • The game looks absolutely stunning for being an indie game, and as visual quality goes, justifies the price of the game. It sets scenes amazingly and is not afraid to make things look grandiose, spectacular, and foreboding.
  • The use of colour in this game is also great, not in an atmospherical sense but from a game design perspective. You always know what something is due to the colour and the glow. The big purple horned monoliths are save points, the big green glowing items on the walls are cell refill stations.
  • All the controls are really intuitive and there’s no sense of mucking up what you’re doing. Everything is simple and to the point and is really “handy” when solving the puzzles.
  • The puzzles within the game are easy to spot, as always highlighted with light or made extremely obvious with a bright yellow valve or an obvious ladder you need to blast down to gain access.

Cons:

  • Despite wanting to be a horror game, the atmosphere just isn’t foreboding enough, and the enemies are not scary. There are no pivotal moments where you feel in imminent danger, apart from the cutscene where the demodogs are out to get you. Otherwise, the game is just dark corridors, boopy doors and the Iron Man gloves. The lack of fear this game supplied meant that things that I would usually find scary were just not doing it for me.
  • While it’s good that the exploring puzzles are easy and easy to find, so far, there is only finding the hand that opens a door, blasting a ladder down and blasting doors open. Otherwise, there is nothing else but exploring and picking up bits of dialogue from journal entries and other lore snippets.
  • I’m not sure what the game was really hoping to achieve. It mixes a lot of different cool elements that really catch your interest. I can’t help but feel as though it sounds like an unfinished thought, or a “what if…” statement that was expanded on but never solidified.
    As said before, it’s essentially DOOM, but instead of it being Hell that humans stupidly messed with, it’s Asgard and the world is at threat of the angry god people’s bad antics.
  • The story of the game, while convoluted, was also either barely present or easy enough for me to ignore. Generally, I was happy enough in this bliss of ignorance, happily zapping things, but when it came to puzzles that slowed me down, it dawned on me how empty the game felt.

Price: £15.49
Time To Complete: 5 Hours
Achievements: 39
Cards: 7
Worth The Money: No, but yes on a discount, putting it under £10, maybe.

Overall, this is a stunning looking and feeling game, which creates a great awe-inspiring atmosphere well, but not a scary or spooky one. It has great mechanics used for environmental puzzles and opening up new areas to explore, but no other puzzles that vary enough to excite the brain. A very mixed review from me, but it’s genuinely a game that if I got around to, I would try to finish it. It has my interest, but not my heart.

In conclusion, this game would’ve been a better game if they’d been trying to rip off DOOM in a way. Taking the fast-paced action and combining it with the “I don’t really know what’s going on because things are going super fast, but I’m having fun” aspect combined with quick and easy puzzles. Throw in a few horror aspects to have the player fuelled not only with the energy of excitement, but the energy of “Oh shit, OH SHIT, AHH! AHHH!” with some horror elements.

Zesty Rating
6.5 Out Of 10.
Stunning visually and gameplay wise, but the story is lacking just enough to make you feel something is missing. Interesting premise, but crams a little too much in, making everything feel a tad unfinished. Still a great game for mindless exploration of the fantastic environments created.

Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changed to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented. 
Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred.
I look forward to writing for you all again.
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[LEGACY] Chibi Girl VS Evil Zombie Dead

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?]
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