Review: Shadow Gambit – The Cursed Crew (PC – Steam) ~ The Curse Of Gaming

Steam store – Official website – Wikipedia entry

Some game genres are so rare, it’s a miracle when a new game releases in that style. I personally call this genre: stealth tactics. The actual genre is Real-Time Tactics, but I find that name doesn’t really cover this (sub)genre. If you have ever played games like: Commando’s, Desperados, Robin Hood – The Legend of Sherwood or Shadow Tactics… You know what sort of game I’m talking about. A game features a rag tag group of heroes. Each hero has unique abilities. They must get through big groups of enemies. They do this one by one to progress the group’s goals. The game I want to talk about today is called Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. This was the last game by the studio Mimimi. Is this game the swansong to close down this studio, or is it a game that’s better left forgotten? Before that, I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below. A comment with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of the article.

Promises of amazing treasure

In this game, you play as the crew of a special pirate ship named the Red Marley. Each main member of the crew has a black pearl in their chest, granting them unique supernatural abilities. These unique abilities come at a cost of being cursed to a sort of undead status.

The Red Marley’s captain fell in battle, and now the Inquisition is after the biggest treasure of the ship. Now, the Red Marley’s crew doesn’t want this to happen. So they do everything in their power to avoid this from happening.

The story in this game doesn’t take itself too seriously. The story is written like it’s a Saturday morning cartoon. A story arc can be contained in one or a handful of episodes, but always has an ending. While almost everything in the story ends well for the main cast, the story and writing never looses its charm. I felt like I was transported back into the time I woke up for the weekly Pokémon episode. I knew that the main problem of that week’s episode would resolve by the end. Still, I kept rooting for the heroes.

One of the biggest reasons I kept rooting for the main characters is because of the voice actors. Their performances are extremely well done. They bring a lot of personality and life to each character. They make the characters stand out like real, actual people. This script must have been immense, since the characters sometimes react on the actions you preform with other characters. There are 8 main characters, and more if you buy the DLC packs. If you start counting how many unique voice lines that bring to the table… And that’s the tip of the iceberg. The enemies for example, when they come together also have unique dialogue between them.

It’s possible to write an article by itself about the world building, story and voice acting in this game. I can also assure you that when I write this article, I’ll keep gushing about it all. A great example is how the save & load function fits into the story. It enhances the world of this game. Yes, you read that correctly. When you save, you store a memory in the Red Marley. When you load one of your saves, the Red Marley uses its powers to restore that memory. Your characters also respond to your saving and loading action and this brings even more charm to this game.

In these types of games, the replay value is quite high. Especially since you tackle all missions in various ways and each playthrough is going to be different. In this game, it’s taken even a step further. You can choose the order to revive your crew. You can also choose the order to finish the missions of that chapter. I can assure you that your playthrough will look nothing like mine.

The main quest is quite enjoyable to play through. I actually became really immersed in the world of this game. At the moment, I’m playing through the final missions of the game and the DLC missions. I’m having a blast. Thankfully, I can easily start a new playthrough of this game. Then I can experience it all of it over again and take a totally different route. And maybe I can do the little side quests and pirate tales as well. Since, that’s content, I haven’t gone into too much yet.

Your playthrough of this game will take you somewhere between 27 to 37 hours. That is, if you want to beat the main story and DLC’s. But, if you want to fully finish this game… Oh boy, then you’ll have a game that’s close to 80 hours on your hands. I already mentioned the crew tales. But there are also mini-challenges you can go for during the missions to earn badges. Let’s not forget the achievements you can earn. Well, most of the achievements are related to the main campaign.

Now, I have one complaint about the badges in this game. Earning some of these badges is extremely tricky. Sometimes, you don’t get all the information you expect to. For example, there is a badge on each map for using all the landing spots of that map. But guess what, there is no easy way to see if you already used a landing spot or not. It’s a shame that some badges work like that. Especially since some of these badges make you go out of your way to play in an unique way. A more challenging way to spice up your normal routine.

Apart from bragging trophies, these medals don’t really add up to much. But, I honestly don’t really mind that. Since, it’s fun to gather these medals and have some bonus challanges during my playthrough. It keeps me on my toes and it’s really enjoyable.

Mindblowing abilities

I’m still quite impressed at how balanced this game is. Each character has their own unique abilities. It’s best that you always have a character with an ability that can move guards from their position. If you don’t have that, the game will actually warn you. You are going to make it extremely challenging for yourself.

Personally, I’m playing through this game on the normal difficulty setting and your decisions actually matter. Before starting each mission, study the map well. Try to remember each map as well as you can. Since you are going to revisit each map at least once or twice. It’s extremely important to choose the correct landing position.

You would think that the game will be a bit boring if you always bring the same crew into missions. But, the game rewards you using different characters for missions. You gain more vigor if you play with certain crew members during certain missions. If you earned enough vigor, you can upgrade one of the unique abilities of your characters. This upgrade will give you more and better tools in your arsenal. Now, these upgrades can make the game much easier. You can always turn off the upgrades while on the Red Marley.

In the introduction paragraph of this article, I quickly explained how this game works. So, let me tell you the gist of it. In this game, you go from mission to mission, completing various goals in each one. These goals can range for example from rescuing an informant or stealing an artifact. In each mission, there are various enemies patrolling the area. Your goal is to find the weakspots in their patrols and dispose of the enemies without getting spotted.

Now, getting spotted isn’t the end of the world in this game. Depending on where you are spotted, it’s possible to escape and hide somewhere. You just have to avoid taking damage, since your health is limited, and you can’t heal during the mission. If you aren’t careful, it’s easy to get swamped or overwhelmed with guards. Especially when a guard with a bell spots you, the traces you leave behind or sees a dead body. When this happens, you have a limited amount of time to kill that guard before the bell is rung. When the bell is rung, more guards will emerge from nearby barracks and swarm to the location.

On top of that, there are also some unique enemy types outside your regular patrol goons. The first type I want to talk are the Kindred. These annoying buggers bring something quite unique to the table in this genre. Kindred are always connected with each other. If you don’t kill these all at the same time, they will revive each other. But, this is only the start of your troubles.

You also have Prognosticar. And let me tell you, these are even more challenging. To defeat these enemies, you need to have two units ready. One unit needs to be spotted or attack the Prognosticar. Since as soon as that happens, your unit gets trapped. This trap will go on and damage your unit until the unit either dies or is rescued. When the Prognosticar is using his trap, he can be attacked and killed. But do it quick. The trap is damaging your unit. You are also stuck in place. This situation is dangerous.

It also matters if the mission is taking place during day or night. The big difference is that in the daytime, the enemies have a bigger field of view. During the nighttime, some enemies will carry a torch on their patrol. This gives more light to other units. They can spot you sneaking by if you aren’t careful. There are also various torches dotted around the map, and you can put them out. The enemies can’t stand torches that are put out and will go out of their way to light them again.

It’s also important to know if an enemy stops in their patrol to talk to another enemy. Since if you kill one of them, the other enemy will start looking for them. They will start running around and if you weren’t careful, will find your tracks and spot you.

Learning those little mechanics is essential in this game. Never forget the tools you have in this game! This ranges from the abilities of each character to how for example view cones work. There is something called view cone surfing. If you want to dash to another place past some enemies… Understand that a full color in the view cone means they will spot you right away. Stripped sections of the view cone will cause you to be unseen if you crawl by. Also, it takes a few moments of you being spotted and the alarm being raised. You can run quickly enough past an enemy. Alternatively, you can run from view cone to view cone. It’s possible to get past unseen.

If you are afraid that you will get overwhelmed by all the information of all the little mechanics, don’t worry. The difficulty curve in this game is perfect. This game also has solid character tutorials. Each character tutorial guides you through 2–3 rooms, teaching you the abilities of each ability and their unique use cases. At the end of each character tutorial, you get a puzzle room. Putting to the test if you can use that character correctly. During the game, you can always open your logbook from the pause menu, where all tutorials can be watched again.

This brings me to the abilities of your characters in this game. If you have played similar games, you’ll recognize certain abilities and others will be quite new and unique. Now, some of these abilities will have a unique spin to it. For example, your sniper only has one shot. But, when you retrieve your sniper bolt… Your sniper can shoot again.

There are also extremely unique mechanics, like your Canoness has very fun abilities. She can pick up dead bodies in her canon to launch them at enemies to knock them out. But, you can also pick up allies. You can fling them over a group of enemies. This will give them a better hiding spot. Or your Ship Doctor, she can create one hiding spot out of thin air. Or your navigator, she can stop time for one enemy, allowing you to easy sneak by. And your ship cook can throw a special doll. This doll allows him to teleport to that location. He does this as soon as you click the button. Oh, and if you place that doll on an enemy, it sticks to that enemy.

You might be annoyed that I somewhat spoiled things in the above paragraph. But I have only told the tip of the iceberg here. I have left out several characters in that little summary and they have mindblowing abilities as well. Each map is created in such a way that it doesn’t really matter which characters you take into battle. Since you can finish it using any of your characters.

The Swansong of Mimimi

When Klamath and I started streaming Commandos, I wanted to play a similar game. One I haven’t played through. Since I first started playing through Desperados III again, and that was beaten in a few days. Since, I really enjoyed Desperados III, I bought the next game from the studio.

As somebody who enjoyed Desperados III quite a lot, I was happy to see things return in this game. I can’t tell you how much I love the speed up button. While I wish you can adjust the speed of it… The slow wait can be annoying. Sometimes, you have to get an enemy right where you want them. On top of that, you also have the showdown mode. With the press of a button, you can stop time and plan out your units their next move. Once you press the enter key, either still in showdown mode or not, the actions will be executed. It still feels amazing when you execute a well timed attack to take out difficult set of enemies.

Something that’s extremely useful is how you can rotate the camera in this game. Sometimes an enemy walks behind a building or some rocks… So, if you can’t rotate the camera, you wonder from where you are taking damage. Also, the ability of outlining the enemies, ladders and hiding spots help with that as well. As you can see from my screenshots, I always play with that feature enabled.

Sadly, there are a few ladders that don’t get an outline. Most likely since the developers forgot to put a certain tag on them. I remember one in Angler’s Grave, at the top right. It’s not too far from one of the mission objectives, the informant. Thankfully, these very minor oversights rarely happen. Overall, this game is extremely solid and blast to play through.

The controls are extremely solid. I had to get used to one thing. To execute certain actions, I had to hold the left mouse button instead of just clicking. This sometimes tripped me up but a quick reload fixed that problem. I only have one minor complaint about the controls. Depending on the camera angle, there were rare moments where your character refused to go to a location. I suspect it has to do with where you click. Your unit always wants to look for the shortest way to reach where you click. Sadly, this trips something up in the pathfinding and your unti refuses to go to their destination. Thankfully, a quick camera movement can fix these moments. And also, I’m glad that these moments are quite rare.

Something that’s even more rare are some minor visual bugs that can happen sometimes. Sometimes an UI-element refuses to dissapear. I had that happen twice, when I shot an enemy holding down an exit rift with the Canoness. The stars indicated that the enemy was dizzy. They hovered above the enemy’s head after the rift opened. Even after I killed the enemy, these stars remained visible. There are sometimes minor visual bugs happening like that. Thankfully, they are extremely rare and sometimes are quite funny. One time, one of my units was standing perpendicular on a ladder when I stopped it going up the ladder. The only annoying bug was that I couldn’t retrieve two bodies. They lay in a remote part of Angler’s Grave. It was almost impossible to get rid of two bodies. Maybe, it’s possible. I don’t know, I honestly gave up and earned the badge of hiding bodies on a later revist.

In such a big game it’s to be expected that sometimes things can go wrong. But it surprises me how little goes wrong and how polished the overall game is. Scrolling through the patch notes of this game, I noticed that the developers fixed many issues. They also added a lot of new content to the game. The last update to the game was even a modding tool for this game. These mods go from chaging your character models to adding new maps. I think I’ll play around with the mods after I have fully beaten the game. I’m extremely close, since I’m in the final missions of the game.

Now, earlier I talked about the UI. The UI is quite easy and helpful. There are several unique icons to inform you where certain things are. For example, where you left the paper doll when using the ship cook. There is only one thing in the UI I dislike. And that’s the list of save games. You get a little screenshot of the location of the save and a time stamp. And that’s it. You can’t give a special name or note to them. So if you are looking for a certain save… you either need to make notes OR just go through all them until you het it.

It’s the only real complaint I can give about this game. There is just a lot that this game does right. Like how you can scroll to zoom in or out. When you scroll again at the max zoom level, you see a live map. This map shows where all the enemies are. The only minor complaint I have about the map is that ammo chests aren’t marked on there. Also, quick note on the ammo chests… Almost every character has the same visual for their gun. Now, if another visual appears above the ammo chest, it doesn’t matter. The ammo chests are never character specific.

Visually, this game looks breathtaking. The attention to detail in this world gets a big thumbs up from me. The world really feels alive and somewhat real. The little animation details for example when an enemy stops at a prison cell to talk to inmates… This is just amazing. The immersion level is even higher with that.

The soundtrack is very catchy and a joy to listen to. It made certain moments in the game even more thrilling. The music has been created by Filippo Beck Peccoz, he also created the music for Desperados III. The soundtrack really fits the game like a glove. I’m so glad I bought the soundtrack DLC,. Now I can add the music to my music library to play while I’m at my dayjob.

This brings me to the sound design of this game. The sound design of this game is amazing. I’m playing this game with a good headset and I don’t think this game is playable without sound effects. A great example is, when you get spotted. You not only get a great visual hint of a yellow line turning red of the enemy spotting you… You also get some sound effects informing you that things are about to go down. On top of that, the sound effects add so much extra impact on taking down enemies. This makes it even more rewarding when you finally take down that one pesky enemy.

One thing I haven’t talked about yet is how flexible this game is. I have touched upon that by talking about how you can only choose three out of 8 characters per mission. And you are encouraged to experiment with different combinations. Now, when you open the options menu, you’ll be blown away. You can change almost everything. The controls like the shortcuts for abilities can be tweaked to your liking. You have quite a lot of control to tweak the volumes, the controls, the visuals… Even tweak certain game mechanics to your liking. Don’t like the save reminder? You can turn that off.

There is still another thing that boggles my mind that was added in this game. You can create a custom difficulty. The only complaint I have there is that the UI fails to explain the differences. I find it challenging to understand all the settings. You get a short explaination about the setting, and then you have a slider you can set. But, what’s the difference between 1 and 2 on the slider? That’s something the UI doesn’t really tell.

When I was writing this article, I kept looking at my notes and thought: “Oh, I forgot about that.”. There are just so many things in this game. The fact that in some missions, you must kill enemies in unique ways. In one mission, you have to lure enemies to a certain location. You need to do this 4 times. You do this instead of killing them. It’s a breath of fresh air. You’d think that having only a handful of maps would make this game boring and repetitive, but no. The maps are not only large but also used in extremely interesting ways. Revisits of a map make it easier to start, but each area is used in a mission. So, there is still a lot of challenge in the revisits.

Oh, there is one more thing. The question if you should buy the DLC’s or not. Let me just tell you this, I bought the game on sale with the DLC’s included. I’m so happy I did! Since the additional content in the DLC’s adds so much more to this game. They come highly recommended.

Now, I have left out a few things for you all to find while playing this game. This article is already getting quite long. I want to leave some things as a surprise for people interested in playing this game. I think it’s high time to wrap up this review and give my conclusion and final thoughts on this game.

Conclusion of this treasure hunt

The negatives:

-Unable to add notes to quick saves.
-Some minor (visual) glitches can happen. Thankfully, they are rare and rarely/never gamebreaking.
-The UI of custom difficulty could have been executed better.

The positives:

+ A masterclass in it’s genre in terms of gameplay.
+ Extremely flexible with options.
+ A modding tool.
+ A love-able cartoony story.
+ Amazing voice over work.
+ Superb soundtrack.
+ …

Final thoughts:

When I started playing Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, I had extremely high expectations. Mimimi blew me away with the amazing Desperados III. With this swansong of a game, they not only met my expectations, they blew them out of the water. This game showcases the achievements of passionate people. These individuals are dedicated to creating the game they love.

It didn’t take long before I fell in love with the cast of this game. The charm drew me into the world of this game. Apart from some minor things, it’s hard to find things to critique about this game. The only thing I can critique are small bugs that barely impact the gameplay of this game. This game really feels like a finished product and it’s a thrill ride from start to finish.

If you really want to find things this game does wrong… You’ll either need to be extremely nitpicky or just have the game not clicking with you. If you find this game too easy or too difficult, just tweak the setttings to your playstyle and voila.

If you enjoy games like Commandos or Desperados… You’d do yourself a disservice to not check out this game. Give the demo of this game a try, and see what you think. I wouldn’t be surprised that this game sinks it’s hook into you like it did with me.

It’s a shame to see that this game studio closes. Thank you to everybody who worked on this amazing title and I hope to meet your work in other games. This final game you all created together is a real piece of art. It’s a masterclass in game development and shows how well you know the community for games like this. I’m so happy that this game exists. Since it wouldn’t surprise me that I’ll play through this game several times now.

Before I ramble on and on about this game, I think it’s high time I wrap up this article. Otherwise, I’ll keep praising this game to high heavens and back. So, with that said, I have said close to everything I wanted to say about this game. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then… Have a great rest of your day and take care!

Score: 100/100

Review: Little Noah – Scion of Paradise (Switch – eShop) ~ Zipping Kitty Attempts

Nintendo.com microsite – Official website – Wikipedia page

When you purchase games on the Nintendo eShop, you earn store credit. I usually save up a lot of my credit and purchase a smaller title with it. One of these titles I purchased a few months ago is named Little Noah – Scion of Paradise. After playing it for a bit, I was surprised that it was the perfect game to play on my commute to and from work. I played it on a few train rides, and I think I’m ready to share my opinion on this game. This game is something unique and now that I have beaten it once, I really want to talk about it. Wait, beaten it once? What do I actually mean? Let’s talk about it in this article, while I invite you to leave a comment with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article in the comment section down below.

Zipping Kitty Attempts

In this game, we play as an alchemist called Little Noah. She is in a long journey to reunite with her father. While she is looking for her father, her airship gets caught in a storm, and she crashes near a mysterious ruin.

In that ruin, she meets an amnesiac cat named Zipper. Well, she names it Zipper. Together, they start to explore this ruin because they encountered a dark wizard named Greigh, who wants to enable a powerful machine which is dormant in the ruin.

Now, if you are looking for a deep story… I’m going to have to disappoint you. The story of this game isn’t the main focus of this game. The story in this game is fine for what it is and does its job, but there is nothing more to it. Personally, I don’t think it’s a negative for this game. Because the story takes a backseat, the gameplay loop is a lot more polished. Also, I don’t think it was the intention to have a very in depth story.

The voice actors in this game did an amazing job and brought the characters and the world of this game to live. The amount of personality they brought to their characters is really well done and really fits the atmosphere of this game like a glove. The amazing voice acting is one of the main reasons why I didn’t mind the “To be continued” at the end of the game at all. This small title really feels like the developers are testing the water if people who be interested in a larger game set in the world of Little Noah.

So, what do I mean by “small title”? Well, this game can be beaten in an afternoon. Now, the game has quite a lot of replay value in my opinion. The gameplay loop of this game is quite enjoyable. It has quite the potential to grow into something unique that I don’t often see in these rouge lite games. But, I’ll talk more about the gameplay later.

According to various sources online, this game has been worked on by a small team of 30 people. Even by some industry legends like Yukio Futatsugi, who had his hand on another title I played in the past called World’s End Club. The amount of love and care put into this title is quite impressive and gets a thumbs up from me. I know that this game is based upon an earlier mobile game from the same developers called Battle Champs. Yet, I think it’s great to see the developers repurpose the assets after the shutdown of that game and make something new about it.

If you have ever played a game like Rouge Legacy, you’ll feel right at home in this game. In this game, you have to explore a dungeon and fight bosses. During your exploration run, you gain various special items that give you all sorts of buffs.

In terms of difficulty, this game is very balanced. While you can get lucky and get amazing items and buffs to make it quite far in the game, with enough skill and understanding of the game… you can even outplay the game if you get bad items and not good buffs. Now, I’m reading mixed things about the hard difficulty online, but I have been playing through this game on normal difficulty and I found it pretty fair and balanced. So, let’s do one more dive to explain how this game works.

One More Dive

I want to talk about the unique mechanic in this game. The combat system in this game is something I wanted to play for a long while. In this game, you are accompanied by Lilliputs. These are special creatures who attack for you. You start each run with three basic Lilliputs. During your run, you can find other Lilliputs and make yourself stronger.

Each Lilliput is very different in terms of strength, element, attack, and unique attack. You can only have five Lilliputs for your main attacks, and you have two special attack slots where you can place one Lilliput in each. So, you really need to balance your Lilliputs well. The order is also quite important, you don’t want a whole row of slow attacking Lilliputs in an area with a lot of range attacking enemies. Also, you don’t want to use a weak element compared to the enemies you are facing. If you are focusing on wind, you will have trouble with fire enemies.

It’s extremely important to understand your Lilliputs. Since, once you started an attack, you are somewhat locked into that attack. You can’t start another attack while an attack is in progress, excluding the special attacks that is. So, if the enemy moves to the other side of your attack, though luck. This game is a whole balancing and time act, and it’s a lot of fun. The randomness in this whole game makes each run unique, and you can never predict how far you’ll be able to go.

Now, dying in this game isn’t the worst thing. All your items and Lilliputs get converted into mana, which you can use to repair your airship. The more you repair your airship, the more advantages and buffs you can unlock to make even better runs. You can also use special treasure chests you can pick up in your run to either increase the strength of your unlocked Lilliputs or give to Zipper for a special bonus for your next run.

So, how does a run go? Well, allow me to compare it to a crusade in Cult of the Lamb to a degree. In that game, you go into a dungeon, and you have to go from room to room, defeating every enemy in that room before you can progress to the next room. Unlike Cult of the Lamb, some rooms give you a special challenge. These challenges are reaching a certain amount of chained damage or hits, not being hit or defeating all the enemies in a limited amount of time. When you complete this challenge, you receive an additional bonus when you defeat the room.

There are also special rooms that can spawn. A shop where you can spend the gold you earn during a run, platform challenges with a strong treasure chest at the end, (combat) challenge rooms and rooms where you can get special buffs from a crystal and a room where you can get Lilliputs or a buff item. All of these special rooms have a special icon on the map. The map also shows little icons when there is still something you can pick up in the room.

Complete exploration of a dungeon is a very risk/reward thing. You do risk your health to go into an additional room to get additional buffs, or do you want to save your health for the next (mid)boss level? In order to beat this game, you have to beat three worlds. Each world works like this: level – level – midboss – level – boss. Be warned, you can only replenish your health potions at the start of a level. During (mid)boss fights, you can’t replenish your health potions, so keep that in mind when you are deciding if it’s worth the risk to go into that challenge platforming room.

Overall, the gameplay in the dungeon is quite addictive and the fast-paced decision-making you have to make is something that got me hooked. I don’t spend a lot of time on my airship, outside repairing it and setting up the right buffs for my next run. I always want to do one more dive and try and beat the game again. Now, the airship itself is build quite well. You can also re-read the tutorial boxes in case you want to refresh your memory on certain mechanics.

Repetition of Diving

Something that really impressed me is how smooth this game actually runs. The optimization of this game is incredible. I didn’t have any frame rate issues or slowdowns at all. Even when I’m preforming my ultimate attack, which causes a lot of visual flair and effects on the screen.

The controls are extremely responsive as well. Very rarely I felt like I wasn’t in control, and I think some of these moments might even have been a false positive where I was trying to blame my mistake on the game. In terms of the controls, there are only a few nitpicks I can give. The first is the decision to place “R” as the interaction button. This feels quite unnatural and took me some getting used to. Also, I think a left-handed mode would have been welcome since I think left-handed people who appreciate the “L” button then for interactions.

Why am I placing so much attention on this? Well, because you don’t pick up items or Lilliputs automatically. You have to stand next to them and interact with their medal or crystal. But items like health drops or burst gauges are picked up automatically.

The other nitpick I have is that when you start your dive, you get a fixed amount of mana from the first dungeon. Why can’t we skip this little cutscene that plays every time? It breaks the flow of the start of a run. Since you are stopped in your tracks every time.

Another nitpick I have with the controls is how the Lilliput attack order can be decided. The problem comes when I just want to swap two Lilliputs of their place. This is something you can’t do. Unless you swap them from your inventory to the main line OR from the main line to a special attack slot and vice versa. Swapping two Lilliputs in the main line is somewhat clunky to do and feels unpolished.

Visually, this game is extremely colorful and charming. While this is a side view game, like a 2D Mario game, the backgrounds are also incredible. The team that worked on the visual presentation of this game did an amazing job. I only have one nitpick about it and that’s somewhat shared with a nitpick I have with the audio design.

I feel like the frozen status isn’t communicated clearly enough to the player. Several times I was unable to move Noah and I couldn’t figure out why. It took me sometime to realize that she was frozen and that’s the reason why I couldn’t preform an action. Either a more exaggerated visual of a frozen Noah could solve this or more sound effects when you try to do something while frozen.

Apart from that, I don’t have any complaints about the visuals. The animation feels amazing, and you feel the impact of the attacks of your Lilliputs and it feels so rewarding, adding more immersion to the gameplay loop. This game is something where I felt: “One more dive” after each time I died and returned to the airship. Each time I wanted to go and explore the amazing caverns. While I was afraid that this game would suffer from long play sessions, I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t the case for me. At the end of a long play session, I have to admit that the game felt a bit repetitive… But I don’t mind repetitive gameplay too much when the core gameplay loop and level design is fun.

The only negative I have about the level design is that you very quickly see all the possible room lay-outs there are in this game. While the dungeon is randomized each run, it doesn’t take long before you see similar rooms. A couple of times, I even had the same room back-to-back. This isn’t a huge problem perse, but I felt that the developers could mask this a bit better with different decorations or minor changes like one of the platforms having a possibility of crumbling or not.

The music and sound effects in this game are really catchy. I would love to add it to my playlist. Sadly, I can’t really find a way to listen to the soundtrack or even buy it. The tracks in this game are charming when they need to be but are also quite action-packed during fight scenes. The sound effects and visuals inform you quite well when an enemy is going to attack.

Now, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I think it’s high time for my conclusion of this game. Let’s dive into the summary and my final thoughts of this game.

Summary

The bad:

– Some minor nitpicks with the controls.
– Story is fine, but lacks some depth and is predictable.

The good:

+ Very addictive gameplay loop with high replay value.
+ Amazing voice acting.
+ Breath taking visuals.
+ Extremely optimized gameplay.
+ …

Final thoughts:

This game is a small indie title created from the remains of an old gotcha game. It’s only 15€ on the Nintendo eShop and it’s totally worth it’s price in gold. While the game lacks some depth and is quite short, the replay value this game has is something that’ll make you replay this game just one more time.

While playing this game, I felt that this game was an experiment. The developers were testing the waters if the gameplay would work or not. This game feels like a prequel to a much larger game and if I’m right, I can’t wait to see what the full game or the sequel is going to be like.

Even when this game is going to be a standalone game, I don’t really mind if that’s the case. This game is a game I can highly recommend if you enjoy games like Rouge Legacy or Cult of the Lamb. While it doesn’t have a lot of, if any, base building… It’s another amazing title in the genre.

While outside of the combat mechanics, it doesn’t do a lot of things you haven’t seen (a lot) before in other similar games. But, that isn’t a bad thing. Since, sometimes a game where all the good ideas from other games come together into one title can be a lot of fun as well.

I’d love to see another game in this universe where there are a bit more stakes in using your Lilliputs. What if certain Lilliputs get weaker when you pick up items of their opposite element? Or Lilliputs that can do a special attack with another Lilliput present…

There is so much more you can do with this combat system and I think that if the developers expanded on the core mechanics, this game sequel could reach quite far. Since, the game we already got placed an amazing foundation for an amazing series. I love this game to bits and I’m so glad I gave this game a chance, since it was an amazing pleasant surprise to playthrough. It comes highly recommend from me. After I finished the game once, I let me hunger for more. I wanted to play it even more. And the fact that I barely have any complaints about this game apart from a weak story and some nitpicks… This game just has a lot of care and lot put in by the developers and everything works and fits together so well.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 90/100

Review: Hypnospace Outlaw (PC – Steam) ~ Dreaming Up Nostalgic Investigations

Steam store page – Wikipedia – Official website

So, when I’m writing this, it is 2024. I turned 31 years old back in February. I still love playing video games and surfing the internet since I was a young lad. Besides that, I also have a fascination for anything that has to do with dreams and their meanings. And then a game called Hypnospace Outlaw turns up on my radar. A game that promises to bring back the early years of the internet that I remember. Not only that, we are going to have to moderate the internet with a new technology that allows people to surf the internet while they are dreaming. We have to play as an unnamed enforcer to keep the internet safe and on top of that, we can create our own pages and mod this game easily. But before we start spending time on that, let’s find out if the base game is actually good and if it’s worth to start playing this game or if it’s something we should skip. Also, feel free to leave your thoughts and/or opinions on this article and/or the game in the comment section down below. Besides, dear enforcer and MerchantSoft, this isn’t harassment, this is a fair review/critique of the game. Removing this from HypnoOS isn’t the solution.

Dreaming Up Nostalgic Investigations

In this game, you play as an unnamed enforcer for MerchantSoft. A company that developed a headband that allows users to surf the web in their dreams. Your goal is to clean up the HypnoSpace for everybody. You start in late 1999, where your first case is assigned. When your first case is assigned, you are left to your own devices, and you can explore the internet by yourself. And let me tell you, there is a lot of internet to explore.

The story of this game is fascinating. You get to dive and explore through various pages on the internet about various things. A long time before social media was a thing and everybody had a website for their own creations. The HypnoSpace has several zones, with each their own theme. If you remember AOL, you will know what I’m talking about.

If you want to get the most out of this game, I highly advise you to take your time with this game. Don’t rush it at all. This game is sadly rather short if you only follow the main story of the game. It’s only 6 hours long and shorter if you know what you are doing. I mean, the speedruns are only around 11 minutes. The strength of this game is the depth it has. This game has three main chapters, and there are clear triggers that separate the chapters.

The deeper you dig and the more you read up, the more interesting lore gets revealed. I actually started a second playthrough to try and find the things I missed. And honestly, this game is one that gets ruined by playing it with a guide in any sort or form. Do not play this game with a guide. It’s a lot less rewarding if you play it with a guide in your first or second playthrough. The wonder of getting lost in all of these pages is just so nostalgic.

Now, while I was playing, I was wondering if it would appeal to the younger players out there. I’m somewhat on the fence about that. While it tackles a lot of subjects that are still somewhat relevant, I honestly think that it’ll mostly click with those who grew up with the internet of the ’90 to early ’00. With that said, I think that it still might click with the younger people, but know that the internet was very different back then.

Point-And-Click Detective

This game is a point-and-click adventure game in any sense of the word. You get a case, and you have to explore the internet to see if anyone broke the rules or not.

Each infraction you find, will reward you with HypnoCoin. You can use these coins to buy various things in the Hypnospace. This can go from stickers, wallpapers, themes, applications to so much more. But be careful, it’s quite possible that some of these downloads are infected with malware. And back then, malware was a lot more visual and less aimed at serving you a lot of ads or stealing your information.

The controls of this game are quite easy. You mostly click with your mouse and input things sometimes in the search bar. If you know how to do basic things with a computer, you’ll very quickly find your way around with this game as well. While I sometimes struggled with opening apps, I didn’t have too much trouble with the controls. Thankfully, there are some options to tweak the controls to your liking, like disabling that double-clicking opens apps. But, I’m a Windows user and the double click to open apps is just hardwired in my brain.

Visually, this game really looks like you are playing with the old internet. When I noticed that there was a mod that changed the OS into Windows 95, oh boy, I was sold. There are various themes for the OS in this game, and they go from amazing to silly. There is even a fast food theme. Now, if you read that this game is mostly created by a team of 5 people, it’s even more impressive. Not only that, one of the main designers of Dropsy is part of the team.

The creativity of this game never ceased to amaze me. Let me continue on the trend of the visuals and say that the little details on how the webpages look is just so realistic. The little typo’s here and there, the rabbit holes you can jump down, the crazy visuals on various pages… Even the “help me, I can’t remove this” and “Test 1 2 3″… I made me crack up and remember my early days when I used to write webpages in plain HTML with barely any coding knowledge as a young teen.

While I knew that wiggling the mouse sped up the loading of the webpages, I just never really did. I just enjoyed the webpages loading slowly and having that experience again when I was a teenager before Facebook or any other big social media started to take over. Yes, even before MySpace. While I only experienced the late “pre-social media internet”, I do have amazing memories of it.

On top of that, you have the amazing wallpapers and sticker packs you can buy and play around with. With this, you can really make your desktop your own. But, something that really triggered memories for me were the viruses you can encounter. Back as a young teen, I was a lot less careful in what I downloaded and seeing the visual mess some viruses can create in this game, it triggered some nasty memories.

Memories like how one time, I got a very nasty variant of the SASSER worm and each time I installed something new, my computer would lock up and crash. Yes, even when you tried to re-install Windows, it locked up and crashed the installer. After a lot of digging, I found that it was caused by a program starting with boot and I had to screw out my hard drive, connect it with somebody’s computer and then remove the start-up file from there. I also had a piece of malware that looked like the ButtsDisease virus in this game. Where it started to change all the text on a webpage to another word. Oh man, those were the days.

So, during your investigations you can encounter various things. Things like people breaking the rules, and you have to report those. You mostly need to focus on one of 5 categories. Copyright infringement, harassment, illegal downloads/malware, extra illegal commerce and illegal activity. Each law gets several infractions, and you do have to look for them. At one moment, I really that to take notes. I really have to say, taking notes for this game is really helpful, you even have the notes’ app in HypnoOS.

Sticking in your brain

Now, something I have to commend the developers for in this game is that they also took accessibility into account. Something I have to commend the developers for as well is the amount of content in this game, even when the main story is extremely short. I already talked about the visuals and how much I love them, but the music in this game is something else.

Some of the music tracks are really stuck in my mind and I wouldn’t be surprised that if I ever write another article in my favorite game music series, some of them will pop up in that. Some tracks are real earworms and got stuck in my brain. The music for some of the parody products in this game is so good, that I wish they were real.

The music in this game is a mixture of various styles, and I find some of them more catchy than the others, but it’s really impressive at how many styles there are in this game. If you know that this game has over 4 hours of music in it, that’s an amazing feat.

There is even a whole suite where you can create your own pages, music and mods released by one of the main developers of this game. It works only on Windows and you can read more about it on the itch.io page of Jay Tolen here. There were even various community events where your stuff could appear as an Easter egg in the main game. Yet, these tools are now part of the main game and are in your installation folder.

Speaking about this, modding this game is extremely easy. There is even a build in mod browser, and it’s a piece of cake to install and downloads mods. If you use the in-game mod menu, you don’t have to reboot the game for most mods to take effect. Just go to the main menu, choose the mods button and install the mods you want. Now, there are a lot more mods out there then just what you can find in the in-game mod browser, so check them out here.

The game has an autosave, it doesn’t really show when the game gets saved. There are three save slots, so if you want to replay the game, you can pick another save slot. Now, if there is one mod I highly advise is he expanded endgame cases mod. This mod expands the game quite naturally and is a lot of fun and additional challenge. But don’t read the description when you haven’t finished the game, since it contains quite a lot of spoilers.

This game can be quite tricky. Sometimes the solution isn’t the easiest to find. It’s even possible you don’t find the solution to every puzzle out there. Now, there is a built in hint system for this game. It’s somewhat hidden to avoid immersion breaking, but for a small HypnoCoin fee, you can get a hint to progress. I really love this system, since I rather have you getting a crowbar to get yourself unstuck than you getting a guide where it’s very easy to other things and spoil the whole experience. Since the fun of this genre depends highly on solving the puzzles with what’s given to you. If you want to get a hint, just search hint.

Overall I have been extremely positive about this game, and I have to say that overall this game is extremely well-made. I rarely found any moments where I thought, this isn’t right. But does that mean that this game doesn’t have any negatives? Well, sadly enough there are a few things I didn’t like about my experience and that I want to talk about.

First of all, I wish the default text-to-speech voice wasn’t the default language of your system if you aren’t English. I’m from Belgium and my text-to-speech voice reads English extremely weird. Thankfully, I had the English soundpack installed on my computer so after I went into the BIOS settings, I was able to quickly change it to the English one and it sounds a lot more natural and better.

Secondly, this is an issue in general with point-and-click games but the replay value just isn’t here. Once you explored everything, you have seen everything. There are various mini-games, but those are quickly beaten. While I personally don’t really see this is a negative, since not every game needs high replay value and sometimes playing it once and having the whole experience engulf you is the idea… I want to mention it, if somebody is looking for replayable games.

Third, you can find more infractions than what’s required to close the case. While I can understand that the game doesn’t tell you how many other things there are out there for immersion reasons, as somebody who wanted to experience everything, I was sometimes a bit annoyed that I couldn’t make sure I found everything. If only there was an option you could toggle to see completion percentage or something of that nature. Since, because of this, it’s possible to lock yourself out of achievements or content in this game.

Yes, this game has achievements and some of them are extremely tricky to get. It took me a lot of researching and exploring in HypnoSpace to find all the material. Thankfully, taking notes really helped me to find it all.

And the final thing is that the final chapters of this game feel a bit rushed and undercooked. One of the final cases is a breeze to solve if you have written notes during your playthrough and it feels like there is content cut out of the game. The ending comes a bit out of nowhere and if you didn’t explore everything or didn’t register certain things, the ending won’t make sense to you and it will loose it’s impact. Thankfully, the mod I shared earlier resolves this to a degree.

That’s all the negative I could say about this game, in my honest opinion. When this game clicks with you, it clicks really well and doesn’t let go at all. But, I’ll leave my final thoughts after the summary of this review. So, I think it’s high time for that since I have touch upon everything I wanted to in this review.

Summary

The bad:

-Text-to-speech should use English by default

-It’s possible to miss content or lock yourself out of it.

-The game is rather short.

-Rushed ending.

The good:

+ Amazing nostalgic trip

+ Amazing music

+ Fantastic writing

+ Easy to use mod tools

+ Great puzzles

+ Great controls

+ …

Final thoughts:

Hypnospace Outlaw is an amazing nostalgic point-and-click adventure trip through the late ’90’s internet. This game might not be for everyone, but when it clicks… Oh boy does it really click. Now, this is also a game you shouldn’t rush. The charm of this game is in all the little details and references that are hidden in the pages and the world building of this game.

While the game is rather at the shortside for point-and-click games, I don’t see it as a big problem to be honest. The journey that this game took me on was a lot more worth it to me than having a long game. Since, I think it would have lost it’s charm if this game kept going and going.

While I personally have more memories with the internet time period that came right after it, the developers are already working on the sequel to this game called Dreamsettler. I honestly can’t wait to play that one, since the quality that this game has is just top notch. The music is catchy, the visuals are amazing and it alls comes together in an amazing nostalgic trip that makes you want to play more.

There are some minor blemishes on this game, but you can work with them. Like I said before, when this game clicks, it really does click extremely well. I’d compare my experience with games like There Is No Game or SuperLiminal. Amazing small titles that leave a lasting impact on those who play it. All of these games are passion projects that turned out amazing and get a recommendation from me.

If you enjoy playing unique point-and-click games and/or if you have nostalgia for the old ’90’s internet, I highly recommend that you give this game a try. While this game is on multiple platforms, I highly recommend that you play the PC version since it has mod support that gives you even more toys to play with and expands the game even more.

I had a blast with this game and it’s a breath of fresh air for me. I’m angry at myself that I rushed my playthrough, but now I have installed several mods and I’m so going to replay this game after I have published this article. I also want to earn every achievement in this game, since I really want to see everything. I’m also extremely hyped for the sequel to this game and I can’t wait to start playing that, since that is going to be an even bigger nostalgic trip for me than this game. And with the amazing set of developers behind this game, I think we get another gem in our hands.

And with that said, I think it’s high time to wrap this article up. I want to thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 100/100

Game Quicky: Guards (Switch) ~ Tower Defense Switching

Nintendo.com page

Today I want to talk about the new game that Drageus Games released on the Nintendo Switch eShop. Their previous title, Moon Raider was a pretty nice game, so I actually have high hopes and expectations for this game. So, when Drageus Games send me a press copy over, and I could give my 100% honest opinion, I didn’t hesitate. I wanted to take a look at this game. I know full well that this game has been released for a while now but due to my busy life, I just got time to reviewing it now. So, it’s time to review this smaller game in my shorter game quicky style. And before I truly start, I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of the article below!

Time to play

So, in this game, you take on the role of various warriors who are defending their homeland from invaders. Each warrior has his/her strengths and weaknesses. It’s up to you to use them in the right way. The gameplay is turn based. The left area of play field is yours and the right area is from where the enemies come in. In each turn, you can switch the location of two warriors. In order for you to win, you have to defeat a certain amount of enemies before one enemy can breach to the other side.

The gameplay is quite challenging and unique. It’s easy to understand, but oh so tricky to master. It’s a sort of turn based tower defense where you have to swap your towers from location each turn.

Visually, this game looks quite charming. The cartoon presentation of this game gives it some Saturday morning show vibes that add even more to the charm. While the animations might be a bit basic, they work, and they help to draw the player into the game quite well. The UI and menus are also easy to navigate, and I rarely found myself lost in them.

Time to skip this one

Sometimes I found the gameplay mechanics rather limiting. The fact, you can’t always choose if a magic user is going to use their healing magic or their field clear attack is annoying. On top of that, you weren’t allowed to switch your characters with an empty space. So, you HAD to switch between two characters for your move to count. Oh, and explain to my why I can select characters and “switch” while it’s the enemy’s turn? The switch doesn’t actually happen, but the game registers the button inputs.

Also, there are some things that aren’t communicated to the player well enough. For example, what does the inventory do? I was pressing the X button, and it only highlighted the button. When I continued to play, I started to understand how to use the inventory, but why did I have to find that out by myself? Also, I sometimes thought the game froze or soft locked… and it took me a while before I released that the game was waiting on my inputs since it was my turn.

The lack of an actual story actually hurts this game in my opinion. I rather have a generic, boring story then none. In this game, you don’t have any context why these fights are happening, and my interest in this game quickly went away as I felt myself going through the motions of every other game. I really felt that there was something lacking in this game and the story is one of the biggest mistakes of this game.

In terms of difficulty, I felt that this game is sometimes more luck based then skill based. A game over puts you back at the start of the game, but you get rewards to unlock more powerful characters. Why this game isn’t a high score game after seeing this mechanic is something I don’t understand. But, this made the game more grind heavy and here is where another big downfall of this game lies.

The gameplay loop of this game isn’t there. You go through the same motion over and over again to get just a little further. This unlocks rewards to unlock better heroes or upgrade your current heroes. While this might sound fun on paper, in the case of this game the repetitiveness of this game left me bored, and I had a hard time writing this article because of it.

Conclusion

I could keep writing a lengthy article about this game, but I think everything is boiling down to one point. This game is undercooked and shouldn’t have been released so fast. This game and the ideas it presents have so much potential, but the actual execution falls flat on its face.

This game has three save slots, but the save system itself is confusing, and I don’t know when my game is saved. The game has three difficulty settings, but you need to beat the easiest setting first before you can play on a harder setting. There is no cancel button when upgrading heroes, and you can’t swap heroes for other heroes when you started a run. The audiovisual presentation is quite nice but due to the repetitive nature of this game, I got bored with hearing the tracks so many times.

I’m sorry, but this game isn’t my cup of tea. I true feel that this game is undercooked and needs some major polishing up work for it to work and be enjoyable. Furthermore, I’m glad to see that other reviewers are enjoying themselves with the game, but I respectfully disagree with the high scores that some reviewers give to this game.

Things that should be improved in my opinion are:

A more in-depth tutorial on every screen of the game. Not every mechanic is clearly explained to the player.
More audio and visual cue’s to explain to the player when they can/can’t do something or when it’s their turn.
A better save system that doesn’t only save after the end of a run!
Polish out visual bugs like the “amount of enemies to be killed” counter resetting only after the round has started.
- It always shows the counter from the ending of your previous run.
More communication with the player. What does “Magical hints” in the option menu do?
Some story to pull in the player a bit more.

Usually, when I feel this negative about a game, I don’t write about the game and I skip it. I write a feedback mail to the developers and/or tell them that I’m not going to write about the game. But in this case, I decided to write an article anyways since I find that this game has so much potential that it actually made me annoyed. Seeing this game so undercooked, it’s a big let down.

I honestly think that this game needed a lot more time in the over before it got released to the Nintendo Switch. From the digging I have done, I noticed that this game first released as a mobile game and after that on Steam. From what I have seen, the same complaints come up in various reviews. Most of those complaints are the exact same then I have. The last update to the game has been since 2017 and most updates have been bug fixes instead of polishing this game up with new features and more content. So, I don’t have high hopes this game is going to improve or if we are going to see a better version in the future.

Do I recommend this game to anyone? Well, if you are curious about this turn based lane defense game with a lot of grinding and a ton of rough edges, I think you might want to give this game a try but for all other players, I would skip this game. Thankfully, the new game from the developers of this game: Warstone TD looks a LOT better and more promising than this undercooked game.

And with that said, I want to thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed reading this shorter article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

Score: 2/5

Game Quicky: Moon Raider (Switch) ~ Time For Revenge

Nintendo.com microsite – Developer site

Drageus Games is back, and they provided me with another press key for a game with the request to give my 100% honest opinion on the game. The game I’m going to take a look at is going to release on April 23rd on Switch but if you want to play it right now, you can play it on Steam, iOS, Android. Apart from the game releasing on Switch, it’ll also release on the Xbox One and PS4. So, is this action, platformer / metroidvania-ish game worth your time, or should you skip this one? Let’s find out in this game quicky while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and opinions on the game and/or the content of this article.

Editorial note: please note that it's possible that this game gets updated when it gets released and that some things mentioned won't apply.

Time for revenge

In this game you play as Ava, the daughter of a scientist and the former queen of the moon, Selene. Now, our former queen needs special gems to stay alive, but they start to run out and Selene gets quite ill. So, it’s up to Ava to rescue her mother, and she does that by raiding the moon of all places.

So far, I haven’t gotten too far into the story, but the setup for the story is simple and to the point. I was hanging out yesterday in a livestream of this game done by Star or Shovelware. The reason I bring this up is that I also used his stream as a research to write this article. Of course, I played the game myself but if you want to have an additional opinion, I would recommend watching that stream after reading this article.

Anyways, the story. It doesn’t get in the way of the game at all. Which is both a negative and a positive. I felt like the story has potential but due to the lack of development of any kind, the story feels a bit useless. Oh well, I’m happy it’s here, and it’s not too generic and actually has a great motivation to play the game.

You would get the impression that this game is a sort of Metroidvania game since it has various elements of the genre but from what I have seen and played so far, this game isn’t that. This game is an action-adventure platformer game with elements of the Metroidvania genre. Surprisingly, it flows pretty well.

The main goal of the game is getting from the start to the end of the zone. You can do these zones somewhat out of order, but overall this game is quite linear with some secrets hidden for explorers. The move set is quite basic, but it does the job. You have your standard double jump, attack, and you unlock some special abilities later in the game.

Overall, the controls are extremely responsive. I got used to them extremely quickly, and I also got used to the quirky hitboxes of some things of the level geometry. But, I have a bit more to say about the controls, but I’m going to save that for later since this isn’t the correct section of the article for it.

Something that surprised me is that by default, the sound and music is set to 50%. I have no idea why that is since the music and sound effects are amazing for this indie title. When you are playing this game, I highly recommend that you raise the volume of the sound effects and music since it enhances the experience quite a lot. The voice samples for the enemies are so well done. The music is decent, and it really adds to the moon raiding vibe. The minor nitpick I have is that this game doesn’t have sound effects for the UI. So, moving in the menu’s is completely silent, apart from the music.

Something you might have noticed by watching the screenshots of this game is that this game looks amazing. The environments are extremely detailed, nicely themed and quite colorful. I think it’s one of the strongest points of this game. The same counts for the animation as well. Together, the game runs at an amazing frame rate and is quite immersive. A minor complaint/praise I want to give about the visuals is that I felt that some traps like the prickly vines in one of the treasure room blends in a bit too well. This can be seen as a good and a bad thing.

The revenge isn’t needed

So, where does this game drop the ball? Well, first, let’s just say that the respawn mechanic is a bit broken. It’s also mentioned in the livestream by Star or Shovelware, but I also didn’t like the mechanic where when you die, you respawn at the start of the zone with the health you entered.

Health pots are quite rare, and I highly advise you to try and stock up before leaving the zone since otherwise you might regret it. For one of the bosses I had to go to the previous zones and get a health pot, go back to the boss zone, go back to the previous zone… Since, one health pot only heals one bit of health.

There is nothing wrong with the quick respawing, so you can try again and try to avoid your mistake that got you killed, but the health thing really slows down gameplay. If the developer really wanted to balance the game, I think that at least half of your health should have been filled at respawning since nothing is more annoying than being in a long level where one mistake kills you.

A second mistake is the lack of a level select/map/completion screen. There are some animals to free in certain levels and special gems to aid Ava’s mother to pick up in the levels, but you have no idea in which levels they are and how many you have collected already. You have an overall counter on the top middle of your screen, but that’s about it. Thanks to the lords that already picked up gems and freed animals stay freed when you leave the zone, but not when you die.

Thirdly, there are some moments where I felt that some minor quality of life polish could have helped the game quite a bit. I had to learn the hard way that some smaller creatures are not set decoration but enemies. But the biggest thing I feel could be better in terms of quality of life in this game is a bit more sound effects when you use your gem energy. Especially when you are dashing, it would have been nice to have some sound effect when it’s almost depleted, so you could act accordingly and not try to go cross-eyed between the top monitoring your gem energy and the middle of the screen where you have to play the game.

Another nice example is how the great save system works. The game saves every time you enter a zone. It doesn’t matter if you enter it via the exit or the entrance, your game saves, and you respawn with the amount of gem energy and health you had while entering. Now, this isn’t said anywhere. There isn’t even a save icon to indicate that.

The 4th thing that this game doesn’t do all that well has to do with the movement. Now, hear me out. You can jump up in the middle of a platform, but you don’t go down. In the middle of the lava zones, I opened a gate and jumped up to a higher ledge to avoid an enemy. But, I jumped on the higher ledge, and now I had to go all the way around to pick up the crystal since I couldn’t go down.

In addition to that, I felt that using the dash was clunky sometimes. I didn’t always feel in control. Since I mostly control Ava by the left joystick and the dash works a LOT better by using the D-pad arrows. I also felt that the “Y” button is a strange button for that. You use “B” to jump and my fingers won’t go naturally to the “Y” button to dash but to one of the shoulder buttons. Maybe this might just be me, but I feel that if you had the ability to remap or use another control scheme, this would have been better.

Apart from that, I feel like the dash drains your gem energy way to fast. This drain made me grind for gems several times which is extremely slow mind you.

There is also no duck button. I can’t count the amount of times I tried to duck to either hit a small enemy or dodge a rocket and looked down instead… That was quite annoying.

The final thing I want to mention is that I find it quite surprising that this game isn’t translated. Usually, Drageus Games’ games are always translated into various other languages. But not this time, this game is only in English. Maybe that might change after the release.

So, yes or no?

So, is this game worth your time? My answer to that question is YES. While the game has some rough spots which I mentioned in section above, I honestly think the positives outweigh the negatives here.

If the developers improved the respawing mechanic, gave us a completion list, tweaked the dash controls and gem drain, polished up the controls a bit and maybe control remapping, this game would improve so much. But overall, this game plays amazingly for being a budget indie title. It’s only €10 here in Europe and I have played a lot worse games for that price.

The hand drawn visuals, the amazing animation and the nice mix between an action adventure platformer and metroidvania makes this game somewhat addictive, and it wouldn’t surprise me that I’m going to finish this game on the train back and from work. It’s an amazing time waster, and I’m so glad that I was able to play it.

So, if you enjoy action-adventure platformers, I would recommend that you check this game out. Like I said before, it has some rough edges but who knows, they might get polished up in a future update. Since, the potential of this game is amazing, and I would love to see this game get the spotlight it deserves and maybe a bit more content since reading from the press kit, I think this game might be a bit too short.

And that wraps up my article about Moon Raider on the Nintendo Switch. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 4/5

First Impression: Persona 5 Strikers (Switch) ~ Let’s Steal Hearts

Wikipedia’s entry – Nintendo.com microsite

I have heard so much about the Persona series, I got so hyped when a new game was coming to the Nintendo Switch. While I know that it’s a spin-off game compared to the mainline series, I honestly found the spin on the gameplay rather interesting. This game is a cross between a Warrior’s game and a Persona game. Now, I have played a little of Persona 3 Golden last year and that made my hype levels for this game even bigger. So, now that I have beaten the first section of the game, I think it’s high time for me to talk about this game and give you my opinions on the game. While I do that, I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and opinions on the game and/or the content of this article.

Let’s steal hearts

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In this game, you pick up the role of the protagonist of Persona 5 again. The events of this game take place 4 months after the events in Persona 5. The Phantom Thieves are having a reunion together when a campaigning trip is planning. Of course, since this is a video game, it doesn’t take long before the plot reveals itself and trouble arrives.

Strange things happen around a famous fashion model and pop star Alice and then our lovely Phantom Thieves discover something that is quite close to the “Palaces” they know so well. Yet, this time it’s called a jail. In this jail, the desires are stolen from the people which make them fall a “little more than” head over heels with Alice. But, that’s not the only thing that happens. Our lovely Phantom Thieves also discover this strange girl called Sophia who is an AI who forgot all her memories and wants to be human’s best companion.

That’s the hook of the first episode of this game. In terms of story, this game doesn’t disappoint at all. Especially, because I haven’t played Persona 5, the writing and pacing of the story explains who is who so easily, it’s a breeze to pick this game up without having to play through Persona 5 first.

I also have to say that the outstanding voice acting does help here too. It really sucks me into the game, the atmosphere and breathes so much life in the characters. To the point that when I come to a part that isn’t voice acted, I actually read it with a poor imitation of the character’s voice in my head. A quick sidenote about the voice acting during gameplay, the various repeating lines add so much to the game. I thought I might get tired of them after a few repeats, but that is far from the case, just like it was for me in a game like Fire Emblem Warriors.

I can’t pinpoint exactly why but the story really clicks with me. Like, I really like how you explore the trauma of one character, and before they move on, it gets fully resolved. The writing is excellent, the story has a lot of charm and character. It has it’s funny and more serious moments and I totally understand why so many people fell in love with the Persona franchise. After playing this game and Persona 3 Golden, I think I might become a fan of the franchise myself as well. One of the things that makes me want to continue the game is the story. I want to steal and heal hearts to help people overcome trauma’s and explore subjects that don’t always get the right attention.

RPG or Warriors?

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The gameplay of this game is in my opinion the perfect mix between a turn based RPG and a Warrior’s game.

Since the first city in this game doesn’t have any side quests, I’ll only focus on the gameplay in the jail for this article. So, in the jails you can freely explore the area while enemies roam around. When you ambush an enemy or get spotted, you enter a sort of small Warrior-style battle. Where a lot of enemies spawn, and you have to hack and slash your way through.

If you ambush them (attack them without being seen), you get the advantage. If you get spotted and the enemies attack you first, you get dizzy at the start of the battle, so the enemies can get some free shots in. So, this game has a type system that you can compare quite roughly to Pokémon in a way. Each type has its own strengths and weaknesses, and it’s up to you to choose the correct allies in a battle to fight the enemies ahead.

The game also has hacking sections where the game plays more like a Warrior’s game than an RPG. In these sections you have to defend The Oracle while she is hacking into the system. Meanwhile, a swarm of enemies attack and their only focus is to destroy the Oracle.

So far, this is the 3rd Warrior’s spin off I have played. Actually, the 4th depending on how you count. I have played Hyrule Warriors (and like I said, depending on how you count: Hyrule Warriors – Age of Calamity), Fire Emblem Warriors and now Persona 5 Strikers. And out of these games, I have to say that I feel that Persona 5 Strikers has the best balance between both game styles.

This game still feels like a “normal” Persona game but with the big exception that the whole battle system is replaced by Warrior style gameplay. And it works remarkably well. I found it a blast trying to find the best strategies to dodge enemy attacks while I tried to attack them back. The risk and reward system of using your special powers compared the environment items is amazing.

Each character has their own unique playstyle where their character and personality shines through. The game might be a bit overwhelming at first since there are a lot of things you have to keep track of. From leveling up your characters and their persona’s, to weapons and armor, to finding enough treasures and things to have enough healing items and even a bond system where you can level up unique perks that’ll make each playthrough somewhat different from each other.

It didn’t take long before I got used to all the mechanics and found myself extremely hooked on the game. Depending on the difficulty you choose to play this game in, this game provides the right amount of challenge in my opinion. A few times, I got quite frustrated at a battle and when I put the game down and picked it up back later, I was able to beat that section.

Don’t forget to save

p5strikers Now, most of my time with the first chapter has been spent inside the jail of Alice. There is some time you can spend in the overworld to buy items, weapons, and armor. With the extremely responsive and smooth controls, I always felt in control and only rarely felt that the game did something unfair.

If you have read some of my previous articles, you might know that I find good UI design extremely important and this game delivers that in spades. The menus are extremely well crafted and somewhat fun to use since you see small interactions between the Phantom Thieves that flesh them out so much more.

This brings me to the striking visual presentation of this game. The visuals look amazing. The charm and character that is put into the visuals is outstanding. This game’s style is a combination of a Saturday morning anime and a manga/superhero comic. It’s also quite bold and not afraid to use the style to its full potential. Nothing feels out of place in my opinion.

When it comes to the animations, these are good as well. Well, maybe this might be on me but I feel that some animations don’t give enough feedback to the player. For example, I found it quite tricky to know where my character was on the battlefield since the combat animations can throw you all over the battlefield.

Something that might be either a sound effect problem and/or a visual problem is the lack of feedback in combat sometimes. The reaction of an effective and a non-effective attack is so similar to me, it was tricky to separate them in combat. Thankfully, the characters repeat multiple times which type of attack you need to use and when you need to be careful when your HP/SP is running low or when a status is inflicted. This is a nice middle ground to solve an issue to avoid making this game too complex or lose too much of its visual style.

So, let’s talk about the music and sound effects shall we? Let’s start with the sound effects in this game. In my opinion, this game is walking a fine line between too much and too little sound effects. Overall, the sound effects and the sound mixing is quite good, but sometimes this game has a lot of visual information to process and the sound effects can get a tiny bit distracting. All the while, like I explained in the previous paragraph, they are quite helpful when a character shouts at you to be careful or use a certain attack to defeat an enemy.

I wish I knew more about music, so I was able to describe the amazing soundtrack to you. Even before I started playing the Persona games, I fell in love with the unique uplifting soundtrack of these games. There are tracks with and without vocals and the Japanese and English versions are so amazing to listen to. So, really great stuff.

One of the things I really needed to get used to was the fact that there is no “auto save” in this game. If you want to avoid loosing too much progress, keep in mind to save often at save points, or before you enter a dungeon since otherwise you might regret it. You only get a game over when all 4 party members faint. Otherwise, you can continue on playing. But, don’t forget to save since it needs to happen manually.

And with that said, I have said almost everything I wanted to say about this game. There are a few things I’ll go more in depth about if I ever finish this game and write a review about this game, but the most important things are already said. I think this game is excellent and if you enjoy (Persona) RPG’s, Warrior spin-off games, adventure games and/or action games… You owe it to yourself to check this game out. To be honest, apart from the manual saving, I barely find any flaws with this game or things I really didn’t like.

So, thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: Blue Dragon (XBOX360) ~ Helpful Shadows

BlueDragon Wikipedia entry

It has been quite some time since I have written an article about a game on the XBOX360. Which is quite surprising to me, since I bought my XBOX360 from an old classmate of mine three-ish years ago. Anyways, I’m glad that I bought the system since when I moved in September of last year, I had a lot of issues with getting my internet up and running, so it was my DVD player. Besides that, I kept playing games on it since it was on anyways. Anyways, earlier this month I felt like browsing the XBOX360 Online store and I wanted to play an RPG. When I found Blue Dragon, a game I thought released only on Nintendo DS, was actually a series that started on the XBOX. I didn’t hesitate and bought the game for 20€. And, because you guys and girls voted for it on my Twitter, here we are. I’m going to talk about my first impressions of this game after playing this game for about 2-ish hours. Let’s dive right into this while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and opinions on the game and/or the content of this article.

Helpful shadows

Blue-Dragon-XBOX-360 In this game, you take on the role of Shu, Jiro and Kiuke. These three young kids live in a village that gets attacked yearly by a mysterious landshark. This landshark not only destroys almost the whole village but also caused several victims. During one attack, these three children want revenge on the landshark and try to trap and fight it. This doesn’t turn out so well and they get dragged away by the landshark.

After a small exploration of the resting place of the landshark, they discover that the landshark is being controlled by somebody else who is taking great pleasure in seeing the destruction and panic. Our three heroes are able to escape this evil person but they also eat a special light orb which transforms their shadows into beats that make them not only stronger but also give them magic abilities.

Now, allow me to be blunt and direct for a moment. If you expect a deep and rich story from this RPG, I’m afraid to say that you are barking up the wrong tree. The writing and the pacing is perfect for an children anime series. But, to be honest, I think it fits the game well. If the writers would have written a more grim plot with the whole “your shadow gives you special powers” plot you would either go more in the lines of a Persona game or risking that the story becomes too silly to be taken seriously.

Yet, on the other hand, this does put the game in a weird position for me. When I play RPG games, I expect more from the story then a simple story for the young kids. Granted, I can enjoy the stories in a Pokémon game and those aren’t too special, but the story in this game is just a bit mediocre. If I have to pin point why I feel that the story in this game isn’t the best, I think I have to say that the story in this game is like a small rain puddle.

A small rain puddle that is quite enjoyable to jump into and kick the water around but it’s just that. A puddle. It has no depth and it doesn’t provide you with more enjoyment than the surface layer. A perfect example is that the resolution of some missions can be skipped completely. In one of the first missions, you have to save the “bravest warrior” from a sheep village. After you have done so, the exit to the next section of the game is right there and you never see the “bravest sheep” return home and lie about him defeating the monster that was trapping him.

There is just not enough reaction on the situation by either the NPC’s or even the playable characters. When they get trapped in a big machine with no way out, there is no panic, no plan meeting… Nothing. Anything would be nice to provide more depth.

The voice acting of this game is decent. I have heard better voice acting but I have also heard a lot worse. But the voice acting has the same problem compared to the shallow story. I feel that some scenes should have been voice acted or at least have some more sound effects to draw you in more but alas, we get silent textboxes.

Missing: Depth

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So, the story isn’t the strong suit of this game. Granted, I have only experienced a small part of the story and maybe the story improves quite a lot when I continue playing this game. Since, I’m seeing a lot of amazing mechanics and idea’s in this game that show the potential of this game.

I really like how you can choose which character is the character you explore this game with. There are no real difference in terms of gameplay doing that, apart from one minor visual one.

But then there are things that are quite flawed. A great example is the map system. Explain me why it’s possible to see the locations on the map in the teleport system but not on the world map? The world map in this game is the most useless map I have seen in a RPG. Apart from a location pointer and an icon where all teleport places are, you have no further information. You can’t even see area maps apart from the small compass in the bottom right corner.

Thankfully, not everything is as broken as the global map. There are minor flaws in the game as well. They can be distracting but they didn’t ruin the game (too much) for me. For example, I think it’s hardcoded in the game that after cutscenes, every character joins Shu to continue the adventure… even when you selected another character to explore the world with. And after a small second, you transform into the correct character.

Now, let’s talk about something good about this game for a change. I really enjoy the battle system. While I would have loved a better animation for the start of a battle, that nitpick doesn’t take away that the battle system has some unique and fun mechanics. Every enemy can be seen during exploration. So, there are no random battles in sight in this game. You can also bring up a circle in which you can choose which enemies to group together to attack in one battle. And while you’re exploring, weaker enemies will flee from you while stronger enemies try and chase you down for a while.

So, you can assign classes to your shadow. These classes dictate which spells and attacks you can use. This adds a layer of complexity to the game that I enjoy quite a lot. In addition to that, the battle system also has a timing mechanic. Unlike the Paper Mario games where you have to time a button press with the attack landing, in this game you have to hold the “A” button and if you land in the “critical” red zone, your spell or attack is more powerful BUT it might need a turn to charge up. The risk/reward system is excellent.

Let’s power through

538217-blue-dragon-xbox-360-screenshot-activating-warp-devices-will From the previous section of the article, you might get the idea that this game is mediocre or isn’t worth your time. Now, that’s something I personally disagree with. I think this game is worth at least a try if you enjoy playing RPG or adventure games and you want to play something more lighthearted.

Maybe the amazing visual presentation of this game might pull you in like it does with me. While some animations aren’t the best and a bit silly, like some walk cycles. The game looks well crafted and apart from some minor animation hiccups during cutscenes with the mouths not moving during talking, I don’t see too many major issues. The biggest issue is that some unskipable attack animations have some minor slowdown or tearing in them. But, that might be because I’m playing this game on a very new TV and maybe the high refresh rate and the big size might be overloading my poor XBOX360’s GPU buffer.

The other big part of the presentation of this game is the audio. Apart from the game needing a bit more sound effects during cutscenes, I think the audio does a decent job of giving this game more character. Yet, I do have some complaints. I noticed that in some spots, the audio mixing wasn’t the greatest and the sound effects sounded too loud compared to the music that was playing. Speaking about the soundtrack, I enjoy most of it but there are some tracks with vocals. And these miss their mark completely in my opinion. Not only is it hard to understand what is actually being sung but combined with the sound effects of the battle, it gets even worse. Also, these songs don’t fit at all as a boss battle theme.

Something I feel on the edge about is the fact that this game doesn’t have an autosave system. All the saving happens manually. So, don’t forget to save when you get the chance since a “Game Over” sends you back to the main menu where you have to load your save. Thankfully, this game isn’t too difficult but loosing progress is never fun.

And I’m not saying that this game is too easy. If you aren’t careful, you will loose and “Press A” to win doesn’t apply in this game. You will have to use some strategy or else you will be defeated.

So, if you would ask me if I would recommend this game… I would say “Yes, but know that this game is not for everybody.”. While this game is quite enjoyable, I don’t think that this game aged quite well. While I heavily disagree with the 90+/100 scores that some reviewers gave this game, I don’t think this game is a bad game.

While I haven’t gotten too far into the game and according to a small peak at the walkthrough, I currently finished 10% of the main story, I’m quite curious to see what this game is going to throw at me. So far, this game is quite enjoyable in my eyes despite it’s childish nature and the various flaws this game has. But, it puts a great battle system, enjoyable worlds and various other things to balance the flaws out.

Normally, I wouldn’t score a game in a first impressions article but I’m going to do it because earlier I said that I disagree with the 90+ scores that this game is getting. I would give this game 70/100. This game has a lot of good elements but the lack of depth and polish in this game is something I would love to see improved in the sequels when I get around in playing them.

And with that said, I think it’s high time to wrap up this article before I find another way to talk about the same point again in another way. There are a few things I’m leaving for the review when I have beaten this game but I have mentioned the most important things. Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Review: Dusk (PC – Steam) ~ Spinning Guns

header Steam store page

I think I’m unable to hide the fact that I love playing retro-style shooters. I love the fact that a lot of new games are coming out in the genre since I like the genre quite a lot. I’m also crossing my fingers that no overload will occur. But, in any case, I think it’s high time to introduce the game I’m going to take a look at today. It’s name is Dusk, developed by New Blood Interactive. And let me tell you, I have set the bar quite high for since game since the producer of this game was the director of the Rise of the Traid (2013) reboot. Well, let’s get into the town of Dusk at dusk to shoot some monsters. But before we do that, I want to invite you to write a comment with your thoughts on the game and/or the content of this article in the comment section down below.

Editorial note: this review has been written after the Dusk Halloween 2020 update.

Spinning guns

DUSK-Gameplay Most of the story of this game is told through the environment. Yet, some details are told the DLC comic. Let me give you the gist of it. This game takes place in the fictional rural town Dusk, Pennsylvania. A huge network of ruins are discovered underneath the town. Those who were researching these tunnels got possessed and it’s up to you, DuskDude, to save the town from destruction. Yet, you are a treasure hunter and you want the riches that are rumored to be hidden in the town.

The influence of the original Doom is quite clear. In terms of story, this game takes the Doom story/setting and puts an Lovecraftian spin on it. I could talk more in-depth on the story but I want to keep this review as spoiler free as possible. The only thing I’ll say is that the story is an amazing homage to several famous horror movies and amazing shooters.

Now, let me tell you. If you expect a deep story with a lot of lore… I think you might have to look elsewhere. Don’t get me wrong, the story and setting is extremely well done but this game focuses more on the gameplay and creating unique scenario’s then on telling a deep story.

Something that’s quite interesting to note is that there is some voice acting in this game. Something that surprised me is that the voice actor for this game is the legendary Andrew Hulshult and he is also the composer for this game. I heard his work before in Nightmare Reaper and now I have the pleasure to hear more work of his. But more about the soundtrack later. The voice acting that Andrew did in this game is amazing. You can feel that he leaned into the role and made the characters come alive.

While the story doesn’t have a lot of depth, the voice acting and the pacing the story was able to draw me in. Something that this story does quite well is that giving you the smallest amount of details that are enough to let your mind wonder and fill in the details and the rest of the story yourself.

Anyways, I have been rambling a lot about the story for now. I think it’s high time to talk about the gameplay. Is this game fun to play with a DuskDude that doesn’t have to reload his guns and spins them when you reload them.

The running slide

950313-dusk-windows-screenshot-fighting-an-enemy-in-the-fields-early Your goal in this game is to get to the ending of the level without dying. In order to do that, you have several weapons at your disposal. You start off with the sickles, these are your melee weapon if you are out of ammo. In my playthrough, I rarely used these. I found that they weren’t effective enough to conquer the various amount of enemies in this game.

Before I continue to talk about the weapons, I want to mention the cigar. This is an item that’s in your inventory at all time and you can use it to slowly recover health. I discovered that fact through researching this game. So, rest assured, this game can be beaten without the use of the cigar. To be honest, it’s annoying to use since it’s slow and has a cool down, which is a good thing mind you. Image having a health pack to quickly heal you, on you at all times. That would break the difficulty curve so fast.

Anyways, the weapon selection in this game has your standard pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, hunting rifle and rocket launcher guns. There are two types of shotguns and rocket launchers. On top of that, there is also a sword and a crossbow in this game. Managing these weapons and deciding when the use them is the biggest mechanic of this game. Also, don’t forget that DuskDude can pick up items that you help you to save ammo. Also, some items may be stronger then you think.

So, you can fight your enemies by shooting or throwing stuff at them. Earlier I talked about the fact that you can spin your weapons. Hitting your enemies with a spinning weapon does ten points of damage to them. Of course, there is also the possibility that you can let them start in fighting. But I have seen this happen quite rarely during my playthrough. But, the crystal of madness holds some secrets about that.

During your quest to find the keys that open the doors to the ending of the level, you can also find various secrets. Some of them are in plain sight and others are hidden behind fake walls. If you are secret hunting, pay close attention to the environment and don’t destroy boxes since they can be used to jump higher. And each secret is worth it, let me tell you. Some secrets saved my skin during my playthrough.

There is one mechanic in this game I’m honestly missing in other shooter games and that’s the slide mechanic. When you are running and press the crouch button, DuskDude does a slide. This feels so gratifying to pull off and helps quite a lot during combat.

There are also power-ups in this game that enhance the gameplay quite a lot. My two favorites are the Fast Fire Totem and the Wall Climbing power-up. The Fast Fire Totem just reduces your weapon cool down to 0. It’s ridiculous and using it on a large group of enemies felt so enjoyable to do. Also, the Wall Climbing power-up is used in excellent moments and set pieces that made it a lot of fun to use.

In terms of gameplay, this game is a well built shooter and it controls amazingly well. I never had a moment where I felt that a death was the game’s fault. The only nitpick I had with the controls is that picking up items and moving them is sometimes a bit tricky when you are getting things from between tight spaces.

The Steam achievements were fun to get while exploring the various landscapes in this game. Visually, this game looks right out of the early 90’s. The visual style has been nailed perfectly with blocky models and everything. Yet, surprisingly, the game is quite detailed and feels like a real dystopian landscape.

In terms of animations, this game hits another nail on the head. I highly advise you to learn the attack animations of your enemies since they can save your life in certain spots. Some enemies are a big pain to deal with but when you learn their patterns and animations, they can be worked around.

To top this all off, you have an amazing soundtrack by Andrew Hulshult. This soundtrack adds so much to the game, it’s amazing. While the game gives off a horror and Lovecraft vibe, you can rip and tear with the epic metal soundtrack in the background that even gets moody at certain moments. That in combination with great sound design makes it fun to hunt down your enemies, avoid their attacks and shoot them.

So far I have been praising this game, like the additional fun I had when I messed around with the cheats in this game, but I’m sad to report that this game does drop the ball in some area’s. Let’s talk about them.

Nostalgic loading screen

950317-dusk-windows-screenshot-many-weapons-can-be-dual-wielded-early Let me first start with the biggest bummer of them all. I wanted to try out the multiplayer in order to be able to write about it. Sadly enough, the multiplayer is quite deserted at times. I’m not the best in shooter games but I felt that the balance was all over the place. In the few matches I was able to play, I got spawn killed quite often. Maybe I need to give it another chance but I have a bit of a sour taste in my mouth so I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Thankfully, the single player is more then fun enough to play through and there is were the focus is at.

I was about to complain about the lack of the weapon wheel, but this is coming in a future patch when the console versions are released. In addition to that, we are also getting custom weapons, co-op and mod support. So, these things might help in fixing some of the issues I have with the game.

Something I didn’t like is that this game is quite short. There are 30 levels in this game and you can finish this game in give or take 10-ish hours. This game has so much potential and it’s over before you know it. I was really getting into it nearing the end and then I was fighting the final boss. Oh well, this game is somewhat replayable due to the secret hunting you can do and trying to beat your fastest time.

You know, I don’t want to do this but this game does drop the ball in something that’s a big pet peeve of mine. This is the UI. While it works and is easy to use, there is some major polish that needs to happen to it. Let’s start with the lack of a map. I got lost several times in some levels because I was unable to bring up a map. Some of these levels are huge and without a map, you can get lost if you didn’t pay attention during a fight.

If you use your mouse wheel to scroll in some menu’s like the save/load menu or in the language menu, the scrolling up is quite broken. Sometimes it works and other times it refuses to work.

Speaking of the save/load system, the save and load system isn’t good. I hate the fact that the list of save files is alphabetical and not sorted by the latest save you made. I always had a hard time finding my most recent save when I wanted to continue the game. Also, when you saved the game for a second time in a level, it doesn’t ask you to overwrite your latest save… It takes the name of the latest save and starts adding lines to it.

When selecting a save file to load, you get the level name and the time stamp of when you saved the game. I wish I was able to see how long I was in the level as well. That way I would how far I was in the level.

Now, this game doesn’t do an autosave when you enter a new level. You have to save manually each and every time. Thankfully, you can start at the beginning of the level through the main menu quite easily.

All of these things are such a shame. Since it puts a blemish on quite an interesting game. A game that does a lot right like an enjoyable endless mode where you have to keep being fast and efficient since there is a huge lack of health pickups. Something else this game does well is setting the atmosphere with the fake DOS-loading screen and sound effects.

But then strange mistakes happen like your controls settings not carrying over from single player to multiplayer. Or the custom cursor not working all to well in the multiplayer menu.

Also, there are things like when you use your double barreled shotgun and you have only one bullet left, you can’t shoot your shotgun. But here is the thing that annoys me, when you are out of ammo for all your other weapons, DuskDude switches to another gun. And guess what he doesn’t do in the situation I described earlier? But of course, switch weapons!

Now, there are moments where DuskDude flips upside down. During swimming moments or in certain levels. And let me tell you, the sudden camera movement was quite disorienting for me sometimes. One timing during my playthrough I even had to stop playing since I got a major headache… But that might be just me…

So, with all of this said, I think it’s high time for the conclusion of this article. Time to wrap everything up in a nice TL;DR and give my final thoughts on the game.

Conclusion

The good:

+ Addictive and fast gameplay.

+ The amount of homages and easter eggs are amazing.

+ The audio and visual design is excellent.

+ Andrew Hulshult’s soundtrack is a big plus.

+ …

The bad:

-Can be a bit short if you don’t go 100% it.

-The multiplayer is a bit eh, in my opinion.

-Some UI issues.

-The save/load system is somewhat broken. (The UI)

Final thoughts:

Dusk is an amazing game that takes you back to the times of the original Doom, Quake and other old school shooters. It’s an enjoyable shooter to play through and I had to a lot of fun from beginning to end.

It’s clear that a lot of polish and love went into this game and it shows. This game is a labor of love that turned out quite well. It’s a shame that some UI issues (especially in the SAVE/LOAD system) are a blemish on an otherwise amazing game.

I can forgive the game being rather short since you can go secret hunting or try to beat the game on a higher difficulty or beat your fastest time. Also, for the price of only 25€, you get an additional 26 page comic and the whole soundtrack by the amazing Andrew Hulshult. That dude has the shooter soundtrack creation nailed to a T.

Would I recommend this game to fans of (retro-style) shooters? I think that’s a no-brainer YES, OF COURSE! The positives highly outweigh the negatives for this game. And with some updates on the horizon, this game might only get better and maybe some of the UI issues I mentioned in this article might be fixed in the future. Who knows?

So, if you would excuse me… I think it’s high time I continue to shoot some of these enemies that are calling me a heretic while I wrap up this final paragraph. I want to thank you so much for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

Score: 90/100

Game Quicky: Grood (Switch) ~ Not That Three One.

CREATOR: gd-jpeg v1.0 (using IJG JPEG v80), quality = 82 Steam version – Nintendo.com page – Official website

Drageus Games is at it again, they published a new game called Grood. Not to be confused with Marvel’s character named “Groot”. Fun fact, groot is actually a Dutch word as well. When you literally translate it into English, it means big. Anyways, I’m getting off track. Drageus Games provided me with a press copy to take an honest look at this game and in this article I’m going to take a look at this 2,5D side scrolling shooter by CC_Arts. Is it any good or should you skip this indie title for 5€? Let’s find out while I invite you to shoot me a comment in the comment section down below with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this (game quicky) article.

Editorial note: this review has been written while playing v1.1.0.

Load the canons!

the-woods1

The story of this game is short and simple. There are a lot of enemy robots and machines out there, so you build a big attack ship called Grood. You want to take on the enemy with this ship and you set out on a mission for it.

In terms of story, there isn’t much more. On one hand, this can be seen as a negative by some people but I personally see it as a positive for this game. The focus of this game is the gameplay and not telling a story. So, it doesn’t get in the way at all. Also, this time it’s in the game instead of only in the description of the game in the eShop.

Something that I found a huge positive for this game is the fact that there is a co-op feature. It would be a huge ask to have an online co-op as well, but hey. I’m surprised that there is a co-op mode. I do have a small nitpick about it, but I’m going to talk about that in the negatives section of this article.

Let me tell you, this game doesn’t fool around. The epilepsy warning at the start of the game is a serious warning since there are some flashing imagery in this game. This game is anything except a cakewalk. At first, I was afraid that this game would use a lot of unfair or unbalanced ways to make the game “more difficult” but I was pleasantly surprised.

This game hits the right balance at being challenging but not too challenging. The pattern of the enemies are easy to learn and avoid. This game doesn’t go into bullet hell mode or spawn a ton of enemies you have to damage through. In most cases, there are one or two enemies who are a bit too cheap in my opinion. At the start of the 3rd level, there is this ship that shoots lazers without too much of a warning in which direction making it too much of a cheap shot.

The damage system is quite interesting as well. The more damage you take, the less color there is during gameplay. Yet, this game throws an unique wrench in the mix. It simulates a broken screen so you have to also think where to aim your bullets since you can’t line them up properly anymore.

There is also this slow motion mechanic. Once you have defeated a certain amount of enemies, you can go into slowdown mode. Everything, even your own ship, slows down so you can plan out your shots even more. You notice how much more time you have in the slow-motion mode with the battery next to your score. It has to be full before you can start it and it has to be depleted to exit out of the mode. You can’t start or stop the slow-motion at will.

You could think that this game can be cheesed by hanging at the bottom at passing through the levels quite easily. Yet, you shoot yourself in the foot with that tactic. Since this game also focuses on high scores. There is even a leader board in the main menu. I only wish it told me on what platforms these scores where achieved since I would love to see which platforms have the highest score.

Visually, this game looks extremely nice. In terms of animation and visual presentation, I don’t have any complaints. The animation of text appearing is a nice touch and pleases the computer scientist in me greatly. The game runs quite smooth through the detailed terrain and I rarely experience frame drops or slowdowns.

Speaking of impressive visuals: you can play this game in “90’s love modus”. If you enable this option in the options menu, you go from the 3D visual artstyle to pixelart with the same attention to detail that the 3D-style brings. This makes the retro gamer inside of me extremely happy. I do have two minor complaints about it and that’s the score isn’t readable enough in TV mode as well as the health bar. But these can be fixed with a minor patch I think.

This game feels quite gratifying to play. The quite responsive controls is another part the helps achieve that fact. Add an nice metal soundtrack with great sound design and you get a game where you have that “one more round” mentality.

This game has been localized in 4 languages. Which I find a bit strange, since usually Drageus Games has more languages then 4. This game can be played in English, Russian, Spanish and Italian. Since I only speak English out of these 4, I can’t review or talk about the quality of the translation.

Let’s forget about the cannons

philosopher-path0 No game is perfect, and this game made a few mistakes. Since I only played the Switch port, I can’t say that these issues appear on other platforms but these things were a bit of a downer on my experience.

First of all, let’s talk about the health situation. While the draining of color is a interesting mechanic that has been used in other games like Tomb Raider, sometimes it’s quite unclear how much health I still had left. This made me play too careful sometimes.

Secondly, let’s talk about that silly “continue” feature. I can understand that you only have one life and when you are death, you have to restart the whole game. But, I think it would make the game more accessible and ease the tension a bit when the player had more or infinite lives. With the consequence, that when a player died, there score was reset to 0 or they could “pay with their score” to revive. That way people can still finish the game but try and get a high score to get higher on the leaderboards. Also, that would provide a solution that you could only continue when you have beaten level 4.

Thirdly, let’s talk about the UI. It makes a few mistakes alright. While the visual design is quite cool and interesting to use… It suffers in the usability department. Take the credits for example, these are unreadable while you are in TV mode due to the angle of the menu.

Another bigger example is the options menu. Each option brings you to a submenu. Apart from the vibration option, that can be set in that menu. Now, if only you could feel a sample of the vibration and we would be set.

But the biggest issue with the UI I have is something quite simple. I find it extremely strange that you can’t go back to the main menu during gameplay. You either have to restart the game or have a game over.

Fourthly, in this negatives section of this article I want to mention that there is no overview of the controls. Since the tutorial only appears the first time and doesn’t appear after that, that means you have to figure out the game on your own if you take a break or let a friend play.

Fifthly, why o why isn’t there a sort of level leaderboard? Wouldn’t it be cool to know which are the high scores per level? Or in what level a certain high score was achieved?

And finally, let’s talk about the co-op mode. I do have one gripe with it. Earlier I talked about the health situation. Image that issue but now you have two ships and you are unable to tell who is almost dead and who has still a lot of health points. Let’s not forget to mention the fact that there is no tutorial in this game so your partner has to figure everything out from either you or trail and error.

So, let’s save or not?

Is this game worth it or should you skip it? Well, it depends. There is a lot going for this game. It’s challenging and fun. It has that one more round mentality and it has a lot of competition with the high scores and leaderboards. Yet, with only having one live, this game can feel quite unforgiving.

The biggest mistakes are made in the UI department. There are some things that really bothered me and made me quite thankful that the Switch has some features to easily reset the game.

Would I be able to recommend this game to anybody? Yes! I would recommend this game to anybody who enjoy side scrolling shooters. This game quite well done and has a lot of love put into it. It does have a ton of minor issues that make the game a bit less enjoyable but apart from the one live – restart situation, most of the things shouldn’t get too much in the way of enjoying this game.

I have left out one mechanic from this review for those who want to give this game a try and want to still have a surprise left. I’m rather curious what you guys and girls think about it. But, apart from that, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game.

So, I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 3.5/5

First Impressions: The Hive (Steam) ~ War With And Of Bugs

thehive Steam Store page

One of my favorite game genres is RTS games. The satisfaction that you get from building up your empire, setting up an economy, and preparing yourself to defeat the enemy. It can be such a rewarding feeling. Games like Age of Empires II, Rise of Nations, or Rise & Fall – Civilizations At War are just three of the amazing games I have played to death when I was a kid. Now, when I got a mail from the fine folks over at Skydome Entertainment with a press code for The Hive and full freedom with my article, I was extremely excited. This game has been under development for several years now. The first development blog posts on the Steam Store page date all the way back to December 2014 and the latest patch has been released on March 9^th, 2020, which is version 1.203. This is the version I’ll talk about in this article, so if this game got an update, it’s possible that some things in this article or no longer relevant. So, without further ado, I think it’s high time that we take a look at this game and it’s worth your time or if you should skip this game. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article down below.

War With Bugs

TheHive2 Something happened to the world. The story of this game starts off in 2175, where our planet Earth got attacked and destroyed. Humanity was able to build a ship and leave Earth before it was completely destroyed and went off a journey to look for a new planet to life. After a human lifetime of searching, a new planet in a new solar system was found. The humans were taken out of their cryogenic sleep to start-up life anew in the harsh climate. But, something is alive underneath the crust of that planet. Something awakens in the City Of Ancients that might prove a big issue for the humans and the catch is, it’s you that takes control of the new species and try and help to find it’s old glory.

You play as The Hive and you are the leader of bugs living in The City Of Ancients. The story gets more interesting in the further chapters but I’m not going to spoil it. To be honest, I got some Overlord vibes from the story. Maybe because both games are about minions you control and have their own unique abilities. The atmosphere is similar to a certain degree. The plot of this game is quite enjoyable and it didn’t disappoint at all.

One thing I should mention is that this game has no skirmish mode as far as I know. So, that means if you finish the 12-ish hour-long campaign, you basically have beaten the game. You could try to beat it on a higher difficulty to challenge yourself but outside that, the game has no real replay value after defeating the campaign.

Now, this game also has voice acting. The voice acting in this game is quite impressive. The production value is impressive for being an indie title. It feels that the voice actors put their heart and soul into the characters and gave them a nice personality. I especially liked the effects they put on the voice for the Insect Advisor.

While this game takes place in a magical universe, there isn’t a lot of technobabble. For those who don’t know that term, it means that everything has its own name and there are a million exposition dumps. If you have played an RTS game in the past, you will know right what to do and the war of the bugs can begin.

War of Bugs

TheHive1 So, the gameplay loop in this game is that you have to explore the caves underneath the planet to find a way up. You learn a lot about the War and the fight against the other species that took place. While most levels use the usual RTS gameplay loop of build city, build the economy, build an army, find enemy, attack the enemy army, destroy enemy base; a few puzzles and unique twists are thrown into the mix.

In terms of gameplay and mechanics, I have a mixed feeling. There are things that I enjoyed quite a lot and there are things that baffled me. Let’s do a round of good thing – bad thing to sum a few things up.

So, while building your empire, you can not only rotate around the camera but the buildings as well. Man, I love features like these. It makes it less awkward when I placed a barracks in a corner and my units spawn out of a wall from the building. Alas, the building of buildings has one thing that I found frustrating. I have gotten so used to the fact that you can cue up buildings to build, but that doesn’t work in this game.

The gathering of resources works in a unique way. Food doesn’t rot away and workers don’t have to walk back and forth to the hive. A special cart rides out from the nearest gathering point to collect the resources. So, your workers put all the gather resources on a pile and these carts come and pick it up. The resources don’t even rot away and you don’t have to do anything for it to collect it. The only “downside” is that you can only use one worker per resource gathering point. Now, what’s the bad thing here?

Well, there is a soft-lock potential. The resources aren’t infinite. Now, imagine this scenario in the Age of Empires II. There is no more wood on the map but you need wood for your archers. What can you do? Well, you can build up a ton of farms and trade that food over for gold to buy wood at the market. This avoids the issue that if everything of one resource is gathered, it’s impossible to get. Now, in The Hive, there is no such thing as a market or a farm. Meaning that every decision counts. Thankfully, you really have to make bad decision after bad decision in order for you to soft-lock yourself but the fact that the potential is there always worried me.

The UI of this game is pretty impressive. The options menu is something that I can only praise. An explanation of what key does what? It’s a feature I’ll miss in other games. If only, a similar explanation appeared for the graphic options, but hey, that would clutter the UI of the graphics options a bit too much. Yet, I have two things that I disliked about the UI. First of all, if I may nitpick, I found the text on the buttons on the pause menu a bit hard to read since the text color and the color of the buttons are somewhat close to each other. And second, the visual design of the menu’s that you open using the pause menu are so different in design… I mean, the pause menu has a sort of cave theming like the UI in-game, and suddenly, a more space / modern UI appears for the options menu.

The fact that your vision cone appears on the mini-map is a great feature and it even rotates with you when you rotate the camera. Yet, I do have a complaint. It doesn’t change size when you zoom and/or out and especially, it always appears a bit underneath the place where you click on the mini-map. I can understand why this happens since the location of the camera isn’t where you click but a bit underneath that spot. But, it gave me a feeling I wasn’t able to click where I wanted on the mini-map.

It’s great that you can skip cutscenes and even have subtitles. But why aren’t both possible in the opening cutscene? A minor nitpick is that there are some minor grammar errors in the game (“Click of the paintings” instead “Click on the paintings” in the second level)

There is this unique mechanic where you can find treasures to upgrade your units to dissolve them for DNA points to unlock special upgrades for your units. It’s a perfect balancing act since you need to decide if you are going to dissolve the treasures and get an upgrade or use them to improve your unit(s). If only that would be explained in some sort of tutorial, which the game somewhat lacks.

Just a bit more

giphy If you read the previous section, it might look that I’m ripping this game a new one. That there are so many things missing or wrong with this game, that it’s not a great game to play. Well, then I think you got the wrong idea. I loved my time with the game and I found it a bit disappointing that some features I expect weren’t there.

Also, the price for this game is only 15€. So, it would be wrong of me to compare this game to big titles with way bigger budgets behind it. The thing is that I enjoy this game so much, that it frustrated me that the potential that this game has is unused.

Take for example the visual presentation. The artwork, unit design, level design… they all look amazing. You really feel like being in an abandoned cave where an old civilization used to live. The animations really make the world come alive. It’s so adorable that your workers dig into the ground to create a building and that it rises up like a sort of mole hole.

The audiovisual design is outstanding as well. This game has an orchestral soundtrack that reminds me of the reboot Tomb Raider games, Rise & Fall – Civilizations At War, and other similar games. It sounds familiar on one hand but new and fresh on the other hand. It’s a blast to listen too. The sound effects only add to the great atmosphere. The audiovisual design is so well done that I can excuse that some things don’t have sound effects or voice lines like when you click on an option where you don’t have enough DNA points for or certain interactions in your inventory are silent.

This game is a blast to play but you have to take into account that there are some things that don’t really work or work in the way you expect them to work. I have given several examples in the previous section, but here is another one. Why does your cursor not change when you hover over a resource or why don’t your worker acknowledge that interaction is going to happen?

This is why I said earlier in the article that I feel quite mixed about the gameplay. I enjoy playing this game but the final touches are just not there in certain cases. Now, I’m not saying that this game is unpolished or anything since there is a lot of attention to detail in most mechanics but not in all of them.

I think that this game could use another major content update or update that just focusses on making the game a bit more accessible. I think if a tutorial is added, something to avoid the soft lock potential and the functions that miss sound effects or voice lines are added; that this game gets even better.

So, I can’t wait to finish the final 5 levels I still have left to play. Since I really enjoyed my time with the game. I highly recommend this game to everybody who enjoys sci-fi games, RTS games, and even to people who enjoy adventure games. This game is quite enjoyable to play and experience. It’s an enjoyable RTS experience that I won’t soon forget. Congrats to the small Finnish team of 6 people who put their heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into this game since I have to say, the end result is something to be proud of and it shows a ton of potential for future games and/or more adventures in the world of The Hive.

And with that, I conclude my first impression. I want to thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

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