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.
The Captain is one of those games that takes me back to the old days of NewGrounds and Armour Games, a plethora of flash games, all of my favourites being point and click adventure games. (I tried to recreate that magic on Twitch once by only playing flash games on Fridays, but I can safely say that no one was interested.) Despite the very long intro with screeds of text that I ended up skipping most of, I was taken back to that era rather abruptly so that it gave me a bit of whiplash.
The Captain starts out with a whole bunch of story I didn’t ultimately read, but I got the fair gist of it. Bad people have a big army and are going to use a weapon to destroy the sun surrounding a planet of great stature, Earth. To make the shield, that was created to protect the sun work, a costly and time-consuming battery must be made at this station that’s on the outer rim of the galaxy. In the process of transporting this cell back to Earth, something unfortunate happens with the experimental “warp hole” technology, which leaves your protagonist stranded on the outer rim of the galaxy without the cell and a broken ship. The BBEG is still en route to s’plode the sun, so you now need to grab the cells and head home ASAP before the sun goes splat.
The reason this game gave me whiplash, however, is because during one of the very first choices, a person died. A person died because I can’t lie to people, in-game characters or not. I’m not a liar, and especially with a situation as dire as it was… I just can’t lie. Spoiler. It hurt my soul so much. This reeks of early point and click games, throwing you into situations like that so quickly and without any forewarning. This game went from boring, clicking through all the dialogue that I’m not concerned about, to “Fuck, I almost cried.” Not everyone will have the same reaction as me, however, as I feel things too deeply, but I love it when games take me off guard.
Pros:
The game works.
The game’s art style is another one I love. Tiny pixels all arranged to make a detailed picture, but still pixelated. I love pixel art so much, as there’s so much you can do with it.
The characters are believable, and the situations are gritty and dire, in the best way. Challenging dilemmas that really have you trying to think so widely out the box, but you struggle to know what to do as it’s the first playthrough.
The concept of time in this game is handled great. There have been so many games that I’ve played before that I felt handled time and time-based challenges in such a shit way. (Dead Rising 2) I genuinely felt as if I was racing against time in a way that I could genuinely handle, but also felt I had absolutely no grip on. Nothing I could do would give me more time, I just had to make the best use of it.
The puzzle elements to this game are VERY flash point and click game. Combining and searching high and low for things. No hints, but the solutions are simple once you get around to them. Minimal puzzles, but always very meaningful.
Cons:
Once again, the text in this game is overbearing. There is a lot of dialogue in this game that’s not very much needed. It does give depth to the characters and everything that’s happening in the game, but the amount necessary is way less than the amount provided, and it’s somewhat of a drag.
The game is predominantly made for replayability. Any game that has the number of choices, consequences, outcomes and just sheer “anxiety via indecision” inherently wants to be replayed. What lets the game down is the lack of a skip button for things that you’ve already seen and experienced.
I genuinely can’t think of any more cons for this game. This is literally one of the first games that I have ever played that one of the people watching me at the time came back to me and said, “Yeah, I went and bought this after I saw you play it.”
Price: 15.49 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: None Cards: No Worth The Money: Yes, play it again and again.
In conclusion, it’s not the best game there is out there for point and click adventures. It also certainly doesn’t rival any of my favourites of the flash era, but is it good? Yes, undoubtedly so. It’s more than definitely worth buying and playing, as it promises a better playthrough every restart and multiple different routes to the path of success. It’s not the most riveting or inspiring, but it’s another good space story that I can easily say is worth the money and the time you put into it. If you want something that’s as close to a 5/5 as I can give, then try the Don’t Escape series. It’s honestly gamegasm material for point and click adventure/puzzle games.
Zesty Rating 7 Out Of 10 A refreshing return to flash point and click routes. Gripping and gritty decisions ensue, with lots of space travel and sci-fi themes. Replayability is off the charts, make your horrible decisions all over again…
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”.
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 walkdue 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”.
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.
Another game from Keymailer, this time one that I had high hopes for. Promising classic open-world RPG elements and fun adventures, Gedonia looked like it was a bit of a break from the burden of AAA adventure games without being an indie MMO. Allowing almost full control of doing whatever the fuck you wanted and building yourself from there. And while the promise was fulfilled, I feel like it was fulfilled in the more lacklustre way.
Panning opening scenes and great panoramic views, all done with a low poly, but still nice enough looking design. A great deal of time spent on the opening of the game, making the player lean on the edge of their seats, drawn in and ready for an experience. You exclaim to your dad, who is not your dad, that you had DREAMS! And those dreams make you absolutely sure that if you go to the cave that’s at the top of the mountain… The TRUTH would be REVEALED!!! Cut to your character clipping through the rocks as they climb the mountain and find a cave. You gain control of the character to walk a few metres to find a shrine of some sort when the “ooga-booga” happens, you see some visions and then nothing. That’s it, come back out the other side and make your way back and your character hints to knowing things but never says it.
From here on, I’m a little lost. I feel like the story has just been dropped and there’s nothing, just tumbleweeds. Don’t get me wrong, there’s apparently lots to do, and there are lots that I can find, but usually these games have some sort of overarching bigger quest. While I know that there is a bigger quest, after all the hype and the “exploration” and the big overwhelming seeming “ooga-booga” stuff, it’s just dropped. It’s almost as if it weren’t relevant or never existed in the first place, or like it never really mattered. What I loved about The Elder Scrolls games is that while you have this overarching quest that you knew that you needed to do, and it was very prominent, you could go out and do anything. While you can still very much do the same here, the importance of this quest isn’t gripping enough to give me a pull to the game, and that’s the whole difficulty of balancing aspects of a game like this. In The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, the threat was there and it was very real. Within the first 10 minutes of playthrough you’re already introduced to the characters and the types of characters you meet along the way, not only that, but the enemies and the overarching threats are also shown as well. The gravity of the situation hits you as the emperor is killed right in front of you, as the cultists also try to kill you as well. You’re given the royal heirloom that will save the day as a constant reminder of your task and escape the sewers into this free world where you can do anything. This is what Gedonia is missing, this overarching weight and threat. While I feel that it was trying to do that at the start, which is so crucial, it fell flat, which meant the rest of the game as well followed suit.
Pros:
The game works, no game-breaking graphical errors or audio glitches.
The game, while low poly, which is not to everyone’s tastes, looks great for what it is. Bright colour palettes for the first zone which is bright and cheery which contrasts lovely with other areas such as the swamp and the dead-lands.
The focus on exploration is great for an indie game. It has such a vast and open world with lots to discover. Off-stream, I played a bit more of the game and delved a lot further than I had on-stream, and found that the developer puts a lot of great detail into the places of interest.
This game has the start of a great character developer. With a different build for different types of characters and playthroughs, it really allows for some ‘re-specing’ or replayability.
While still a bit clunky and not polished, the crafting system is simple and is tailored to the level or level range of your character. The things you need to craft are not outrageous in comparison to the time and effort needed to find the resources, in tie with how hard it would be to obtain such resources at your level. It’s well-thought-out.
There appears to be an array of puzzles within the quests available. I’ve only came across one puzzle so far, but it was simple enough to solve but just as good. A good balance of being simple yet challenging is hard to find within indie games.
Cons:
This game is in early access, everything is unpolished and unfinished, it is not a finished product. This is more of a disclaimer than a con, but is probably the reason a lot of the cons I have so far exist.
There is a lot of character clipping in the cutscenes (and a little in the game itself) which is a minor flaw, but when watching it took me out of the game a bit.
The “main quest” of this game almost has no weight, which when starting a game like this you need some sort of momentum to propel the player forward, a little push or shove to get the ball rolling. For me, the quick intro and cutscene just didn’t hammer the nail in enough, and more or less hammered it into the coffin for the game. It left me with no motivation to explore or actually see the quest through as I had no urgency, and no sense of wonder as to what the character meant in all this.
The other quests in the game don’t really hit home either. The only quest so far I vaguely had any interest in was the person being constantly hit by lightening, but just like the main quest, something fell flat within the quest that just made me uninterested again.
The environment of the game, while being nice looking and scenic for the art style that it has, it’s very dead, there’s nothing else to it but what it is. Seeming to be full of life, but lifeless all at the same time. The NPCs, as well, also lifeless. While of course, we can’t all have wandering A.I. that have their jobs and schedules, but their animations are also rather flat and dead as well.
The combat for the game is very clunky, stiff, and slow. The dodging is more of a roll or sidestep, and when you’re a low level, it’s REALLY tricky for you to level up when suddenly ambushed by a bear or group of bandits. It’s difficult to tell where I’m supposed to level up because I don’t see any levels above the bar and always feel a bit overwhelmed being a new character.
Price: £9.29 Time To Complete: N/A Achievements: 16 Cards: None Worth The Money: Yes, when it’s a finished game. Not right now, however.
Overall, this game is in Early Access, there’s not much else to say. Gedonia has been in development for some time and from what I can see in the other reviews and the community for this game, it just keeps getting better and better. It also seems to be another lone dev game, which is something I love. It’s still in Early Access, for good reason, but doesn’t claim to be anywhere near finished. I can wholeheartedly recommend this game to people who want something to follow and love as time goes on, a work in progress and hopefully not a project that may get abandoned at some point. I cannot recommend this to people who want a full game, who long for an experience without pause, who require a robust adventure to fill their soul. I believe that there will be a time that I can recommend this game for that, but that time is not now.
Zesty Rating 4.5 Out Of 10 A work in progress by a lone dev, a promising outlook. Adventure and endless possibilities promised and a great journey to be had when finished. The unfinished part is the only negative, and it’s a little empty, but it’s acceptable by Early Access standards.
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.
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 