First Impression: Suicide Guy – The Lost Dreams (Switch) ~ Let’s Find A Waking Solution

Nintendo.com microsite – Metacritic – ChubbyPixel

Since I started blogging, I have some developers reaching out to me with the question to review their game. One of these developers is Chubby Pixel, the developers behind Woodle Tree and Suicide Guy. Now, this game might have a trigger word in the title, the game doesn’t handle depression or actual suicide at all. In this series, our goal is to wake our dude up by ending his dreams as fast as we can. And how can a dream continue if we die in a dream? So, is this new entry in the trilogy a good entry or did the series run its course? Let’s find out in this article together. Since the developer gave me a free, press key to give you my 100% unfiltered opinion on the game. If you have any thoughts on this article and/or the content of the game, feel free to write a comment in the comment section down below.

Editorial note: this article is written on v1.1.

Let’s find a waking solution

We still play our beloved guy in this game. This guy already went on two previous adventures in his dreams to try and save himself from disaster. In his first adventure, he falls asleep while watching TV and the beer in his hand is falling towards the floor. He wakes up in a diner, where the screens in the diner are warning him on the danger of his favorite beer falling towards the ground. Our beer loving guy doesn’t want that, so we try to end his dreams as soon as possible, so we can catch that beer bottle before it hits the ground. And in the second adventure, our dude drinks an even stronger version of the beer, and let’s just say that he has a very strange drunken adventure.

In this third game, we don’t really know the trigger that sends our guy in the hell that’s layered dreams. Probably, it’s either the influence of his mind playing tricks on him. You know, when your mind creates some strange dreams sometimes? When you are exhausted or just have a lot going on.

Anyways, the story in these games isn’t the main focal point. It just provides an amazing setting for an interesting first person adventure game where the goal of each level is to wake up from your dream, so our guy can wake up and continue with his life. It’s an amazing setup for this subject, since it might be sensitive to some people. Also, while this is the third game in the series… You don’t need to have played or completed the previous two games. These games can be played in any order and the only link between the three games is the main character and the gameplay mechanics.

The main hub in this time around is a spaceship. We have 18 new levels to complete, so we can wake the guy up and let him continue with his life. If you have played one of the previous two games in this series, you know what to expect in this game. Let me cut this article short for those who played one of the two previous games by saying, if you enjoyed those games… You’ll enjoy this one as well. Since, it’s a total new set of puzzles for you to figure out. But, allow me to talk a bit more in-depth about this game for those who either forgot things about these games or just want to know more.

The references game

In the previous two games, you may have one or two levels referencing another game or a franchise. In this game, the amount of references is just through the roof. Quite often during my playthrough I was happily surprised at the references in this game to other games without it being overpowering and stealing the show. Various levels are also themed around big franchises, and I just love it. While I haven’t reached that point in the game just yet, I’m especially looking forward to the Indiana Jones level near the end. The reason I know that there is an Indy themed level is that I saw the trailer and our guy is just running around with a whip in a tomb… The amount of references I counted during watching that trailer was impressive to say the least.

At the moment of writing, this game is currently only released on the Nintendo Switch. Later this year, a Steam port will be released. It won’t surprise me that this game will come to other platforms as well in the future. At first, I found it a bit unfamiliar to not play this game on a mouse and keyboard, but I really quickly got used to playing this game on a controller.

The first level is an excellent tutorial level where most of the mechanics of this game get introduced. Don’t be silly and jump down at the end of the tutorial, since you’ll be back at the start and have to go back using the long away around. The tutorial in this game is excellent and teaches the mechanics to new players and is a quick refresher to those who played the games in the past since it has been quite some time since the previous title got released.

In general, the controls are quite responsive and great to use. Although, sometimes the controls felt a little floaty. Especially while jumping, I sometimes felt I didn’t have control on where I was going to land. Maybe adding a small black shadow underneath the guy, so players can judge the landing more, would be an ideal way to solve this issue. Currently, we have only a shadow to the side, but this isn’t enough to judge distance since you can’t exactly see where the shadow starts.

At first, I also wanted to complain about the slow turning of the camera. But, I was able to crank that up in the options’ menu. A bit higher sensitivity and voila, we were in business. You can also invert the camera controls there, if you want. There are quite some settings you can adjust, so you can optimize the game to how you want to play. Another example is you can enable or disable the rumble. But that seems to be bugged out, since each and every time I went to check on rumble it gets disabled.

If I’m allowed to nitpick, I have a few minor complaints about the options UI. First, in the main menu when you choose the “options” button, you appear on the second button instead of the first button of that menu. Secondly, in-game… You have the language option, but you can’t interact with it. There are also two “apply changes” buttons in that menu while in the game. Thirdly, there is no way to go back to the hub once in a level, only to the main menu. And a final nitpick is, why are two of the sound effects buttons (ZL and ZR) working while in the menu and not the others? I’d disable that, since the other solution would drive people who use the D-pad for menu navigation insane.

Now, the previous paragraph might sound like I’m giving the impression that the menu’s in this game are broken and unusable. But, that’s not true at all. They have some minor issues that should be polished out and that’s that. It wouldn’t surprise me that after the release of this article, the developer fixes several of these issues with a patch. Knowing Chubby Pixel, they are extremely open for feedback and bug reports, and they try to fix as many as they can. Once, I posted a YouTube video on a glitch I found, and one of the lead developers commented sometime later that they fixed that bug. Also, I notice that they really take advice to heart. So, if you have any feedback for them, just go to their Discord server and tell them or contact them, and they will help you out!

This game is quite linear and is mostly a puzzle game. After finishing the tutorial, you arrive at the hub, where you can go to the next level. Each level has a certain theme and your goal is to end that dream while exploring the level and using the tools provided to you. The fun in this game is that you have to figure out how to end the dream, since there is always one solution per level. There is also some replay value in this game since in each level there is a hidden collectible statue you can find. And let me tell you, some of these are quite tricky to find.

If you want to play this game, I highly recommend that you don’t use a walkthrough. Since, most of the fun in this game is trying to figure out what you need to do to complete the level. I’d only use a walkthrough when you are truly stuck and don’t know how to progress. Most levels can be finished in give or take 5 minutes, there are a few levels that are a bit longer, but not that much longer if you know what you are doing.

Since the levels are so short, I honestly don’t find it a big problem that you can’t save during a level. If you exit the game during a level, you’ll have to restart that level from the start once you reboot the game. And sometimes restarting a puzzle with a fresh mind might give you the solution. There is only one save slot and the game automatically saves after finishing every level. So, we don’t have to worry about that.

It’s getting better and better

When I’m honest with myself and look back at the previous games from Chubby Pixel, I’m really seeing growth in quality. While this game would take you around an hour when you know what you are doing, I rather see quality over quantity. When I started to play this game, I encountered barely any strange physics bugs or objects behaving in strange ways. These were present in the two previous games and patched out, but not this time. Also, weird little quirks like you seeing the player object (floating arms) when crouching and looking to the sides aren’t present in this game anymore.

There are also more details in the environments this time around. Visually, I felt like every level was a complete package and felt like a real dream somebody could have, while it still looked cartoony and colorful. I can’t exactly explain why, but I feel that the charm of the series is reaching its full potential in this game. The only thing I can be critical about in terms of the visuals is that if you go to the edges of the levels you can sometimes clip a bit in things and see a bit more than you are supposed to. This also very rarely happen inside the levels, but I only saw one time.

I really mean what I say in that the quality is improving each and every game. The puzzles are more clear, the visuals get better, the world design is improving… I also still adore how the music in this game is played through radio’s in the level which you can enable and disable to turn the music on and off. It also acts like a true radio where if you move away from it, the music grows more quite.

The music in this game just fits the charming atmosphere like a glove. It’s relaxing and just helps you to put your mind in a relaxing state. This game is a perfect game to wind down or just try to solve some interesting puzzles and relax.

This game also has quite the stable framerate. I didn’t notice any moments where the game started lagging or had slow downs. In terms of visuals and preformance, I only have one minor complaint about the animations. And that is that you can’t always see the punching animation when you move the camera a bit to the top.

I think that a great summary for this game is that this third entry in the Suicide Guy series is the best entry yet. The experience of the two previous games really shines through and this game is even more polished than the two games that came before it. I’m really having a difficult time trying to find things to critique. Especially since the quaility we are getting for a game that costs only €8 is insane to me.

Also, most things I can point out to critique could be patched in an update. Earlier examples I gave where mostly UI but let me give an example of a gameplay mechanic. There is a level where you have to jump on red elephant plushies to reach the sun. The level is extremely well built but I found it quite annoying that the red elephants could fly off if you jumped on the wrong area. I’d love to see a way to make these plusies more solid since it got quite frustrating if you were backtracking to get another plushie to complete the route and you jumped on one plushie the wrong way and it flew off to the ground. Another solution would be a midway checkpoint since if you complete the plushie part, you have to jump on the clouds and if you miss there, you can easily climb the castle via a ramp. Maybe I got a few times unlucky but I feel that either making these plushies more solid or giving a mid-way checkpoint during this part would improve that level quite a lot.

And that’s exactly my point I’m trying to make in this section of the article. In the past, there were more glaring flaws in the levels or just frustrating (timed) levels… Looking at you Rube Goldberg machine level from Sleeping Deeply. But in this game, a lot of the issues I found in the previous titles aren’t here anymore or in a way smaller capacity. A lot of things I talked about in this article aren’t dealbrakers. Some of them are (extreme) nitpicks even. I may repeat myself now but a lot of them can be fixed with a patch.

In conclusion, if you enjoy puzzle and/or adventure games, I’d totally recommend this game. This game doesn’t take itself too serious and that makes it a blast to play through. It’s an amazing game to spend an afternoon or two trying to beat all the levels and find all the hidden statues. I’m happy to see the newest entry in the series and looking at this entry, I’m sure that we are going to get more amazing games from Chubby Pixel. A small Italian indie game studio totally worth following.

I enjoyed my time playing this game and I’m thankful that I could write an article about it. But, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I hope you enjoyed reading the article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

Game Quicky: Cipher Zero [Demo] (PC – Steam) ~ Picross With Extra Solutions

Press kit – Website – Steam store page

I’m always happy when developers give me the chance to review their game. While these days, I don’t always have the time to write an article in time for the release… I make it a priority to review these games first. In today’s article, I’m taking a look at Cipher Zero. Also, if you find this game interesting, you might want to take a look at the original version created for a game jam here or play the demo at the linked Steam page. In any case, I got a press key to give my 100% honest opinion on the game, so let’s go. If you have any thoughts/opinions on the game and/or the content of the article, feel free to share them in the comment section down below.

Editorial note: Currently, the full game isn’t out, but a demo is. The demo is giving a first impression on the final product.

The good

In this game, there is no real story. There is some world building, so this game isn’t your typical bland puzzle game. But, it’s vague and mysterious, so you fill it with your imagination. The relaxing music and the liminal space vibe this game is going for is just amazing.

Currently, the game is tracking quite a lot of what the players are doing in game. This could have some privacy concerns, but you can enable or disable that in the settings. The data is mostly meant for the developers to see if a puzzle is working or not. For example, while I was playing and researching this game… I got stuck on one level. After beating the level, somebody at the development team gave my suggestions to the team, and they are keeping an eye on that puzzle and the data it generates. This gives me a good feeling, since the developer is listing to input from their players and looking at where they get stuck to improve their game.

Sidenote, this is what is being tracked by the developer:

Regarding tracking, we’re tracking standard metrics in the game: how long you’re in the game for, how long you spend on puzzles, how many times you get things correct or incorrect. We also have a separate tool that tracks performance/crash data from the game so we can get additional information on crashes or errors that are happening during development. No other information is gathered from the user past that, and users have the ability to opt out before any data tracking begins.

– Developers of this game.

So, this game is basically a Nonogram with extra steps. If you don’t know what a nonogram is, you should read the linked Wikipedia article, since it’s tricky to explain. The tl;dr is basically that you have to fill in a grid where the amount of squares you need to be filled in are indicated at the sides of the grid.

Now, usually these puzzles are in a full grid. Yet, in this game, the grids have their own unique shapes, making the puzzles more unique. Also, slowly new mechanics are introduced, spicing up the puzzles. Something I love quite a lot is that sometimes a puzzle might have multiple solutions. I enjoyed trying to find all different solutions to a puzzle whenever it was possible.

The visuals are quite clean and overall easy to understand. The animations also clearly communicate to the player where they went wrong in the puzzle. Since there is no tutorial, that’s essential to get right. At one hand, the fact that there is no tutorial can be off putting to some players, yet overall the progression in this game is very well done… So, that’s no big problem at all.

The bad

Currently, the minimalistic design has some flaws. Like some things have a bind but no button. For example, there is no easy way to reset your puzzle. Along those lines, the iconography in this game isn’t the best. You have a gray circle to check your answer… It took me a while at my first puzzle to know I could click that to check my answer.

Going along that route, the level map is also not displaying enough information. It’s a nightmare trying to find a level to replay since if you don’t remember its location… There is no real indication on the world map what the map mechanic is in that batch of levels. Also, there is no way to go to the last level when you are at the start of the map.

Most problems I had with this game came from the UI, controls and a little bit of the flow of the game. I already gave two examples in terms of the UI. Let me give you another one. While you are playing a batch of levels, you have a bar at the top showing you how far you are in that section. Yet, it’s pretty unclear where one level starts and where one ends. So, if you want to go back to study an earlier example… Well, that’s going to require some clicking and guess work. I think this could be solved by breaking up that bar or having more clear indications for levels. Now, it’s a bit too clean.

Another small UI issue I find is that it in the options menu, it isn’t clear if an option is on or off. Now, we have a toggle switch that’s kind of meaningless.

The flow issue I have with the demo is that after beating the final puzzle… you don’t go automatically to the “end demo” screen. You do unlock it on the map menu, but it would be nice if I didn’t have to do those additional clicks.

In terms of the controls, the only issue I had is that the scroll wheel shouldn’t be the default way to go back and forth between puzzles. It is a bit too easy to hit your scroll wheel and loosing progress in that way.

The final thing I want to talk about is that there is no real hint system in this game. I’d love to see a small hint system where if you fail a certain amount of times, you can let the game fill in one or more squares in for you. It’d help for people getting stuck and being frustrated since one puzzle is stopping their progress.

There are also some amazing features being unbound by default. Like clearing the map or cycle through the solutions. If you want to play this game, I highly recommend that you bind these keys in the options menu first. You’ll thank me later for that.

The conclusion

So, when you read this article, you might think that this game has some major problems. Overall, this game currently has a very solid foundation. Yet, if the final product is just going to be additional levels… I think this game is going to get mediocre reviews.

My biggest issue with this game is that the minimalistic UI choices make it that some quality of life features are missing. Things like level numbers, indications of puzzle theme on the level map and here and there more icons for actions you can do would go a long way. Just a bit more information for the player. And you can always make these features a toggle, so the player can choose to show or hide them.

Suggestions for the full game is adding an easy way to reset your progress and have a built-in speedrun timer. Since, this game is the perfect game for speedrunning. Also, let the animations from the level map speed into the actual level from time to time. How cool would it be to see the train pass through the bottom while you are solving one of the levels?

All in all, after playing the demo I have high hopes for this game. I just cross my fingers that it’s going to be more than just more levels and puzzle mechanics. Since, if you polish this game a bit more besides giving it more levels… It’s going to go a long way. More levels don’t always make it a better game. Sometimes an extremely polished short game is better than a long game with undercooked or underused things. So, I’m curious to see the final product, so I can keep puzzling on while being puzzled.

And with that said, I have said everything I want about the game for now. I want to 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 welcome you in another one, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: Phasmophobia (PC – Steam) ~ Ghostly Logic Puzzles

Steam page – Wikipedia page

From time to time, I enjoy playing horror games. Sometimes, it’s fun to be scared and to see things that unnerve you, unsettle you, show you things that you don’t understand. One big issue that I have with horror games is that a lot of them are either going for the jump scare route or are just not creepy at all. Of course, they have spooky imagery, but I don’t call a game like Five Nights At Freddy’s a horror game. It’s a dark adventure game. Maybe I might be desensitized to horror… games like Corpse Party and the Zero Escape games are scary because they like to pull the rug out from underneath you, making you feel on edge. Now, Phasmophobia gets a lot of praise for being one of the better indie horror games and ghost games out there. But, is it actually? Well, let’s dive right into this investigation, while 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 this article.

Editorial note: this game is in early access and next month a big new update is going to drop. So keep that in mind while reading this article.

Ghostly Logic Puzzle

As soon as you start playing this game, it’s quite clear that it’s a game meant to be played off and on. There is no real story in this game. The only story in this game is that you are a part of a ghost hunting group going to haunted locations to investigate which ghost is haunting the place. There is no exorcism in this game, so you don’t free the places of the ghost.

Apart from some lore here and there, you shouldn’t play this game if you are looking for an in-depth ghost investigation game. If you want a ghost investigation game with a deep story, I’d steer more towards Conrad Paranormal P.I. This is more of a horror puzzle game. A game that starts as an overwhelming game, but the more you play and study it, the more you learn its unique mechanics, and it becomes a lot more fun.

The main focus of this game is to be a co-op party game. A game you play with up to four friends. If you watch the streams I’m doing with Klamath, you might have heard me drop hints at me streaming this game together with Bluescreen18, the_Kovic & Klamath. We have been playing this game to test our setup and I think you’ll all like it. Bluescreen18 even uploaded a few of our test sessions. Sadly, life got in the way for more sessions, but these sessions were so much fun.

But, why am I having so much fun with this game? What makes this game work, and why is it so addictive? That’s what I’m going to try and explain in this article. Let me firstly talk about what I mean with that this game is a ghostly logic puzzle and that this game starts overwhelming and becomes more fun over time.

In this game, you go to various maps to investigate. The ghost and its behavior are randomized. This means that each round is different and you rarely have similar ghosts. Depending on your difficulty setting, you can get three evidences. As soon as you find any evidence, you can note it down in your journal. With this journal, you can narrow down which ghost you are dealing with. It also gives you an overview of additional objectives, taken pictures, and has a small in-game wiki on the ghosts.

The goal of each round is to survive and guess the right ghost that’s haunting the place. If you do that, you earn money depending on the taken pictures and completed side objectives. Wait, what do I mean with survive? Well, you start with a 100% sanity level at the start of a round. When you stand in the dark or interact with ghost events or cursed items, your sanity drops. When it drops below a certain range, the ghost starts a hunting phase. In this hunting phase, it’s best that you hide and disable all your equipment since when the ghost catches you, you are out of the round. Your reward at the end of the round is also at least halved or worse. Also, during the hunts… The exits are locked so, there is no escaping before the hunt is over.

In the two previous paragraphs, I have explained the bare basics of this game. Yet, there are so many more mechanics in this game that trying to explain them all or most of them like I usually do in my articles is crazy work. This game is overwhelming and if you go into it blind, I highly recommend that you go through the training mode at least twice or maybe even trice. Not that the training mode is bad, but it helps to get you into the rhythm, the loop of this game.

So, why is this game a giant logic puzzle? Well, at the moment of writing, this game has 24 ghost types. All of these ghosts can be identified by a unique combination of 3 out of 7 possible evidences. With the current journal system, it’s easy to see which ghosts are still in the running as soon as you note down or cross off an evidence. So, you don’t have to learn all the 24 sets of 3 evidences.

Now, each ghost also has unique behavior, strengths and weaknesses. Some examples are, a Wraith doesn’t walk into salt piles, the D.O.T.S. can only be seen through a camera for a Goryo and the Obake has a small chance that the left fingerprints have a finger extra.

So, if you combine the knowledge of ghost behavior and evidences, you can find the ghost easier and easier. As soon as you find its favorite room, you can start setting up and try to figure out the ghost you are dealing with. At the start of each round, the ghost chooses its favorite room and that’s where most of the evidences can be obtained. It’s also the place from where it starts hunting if the player or group sanity is low enough.

Evolving game

Since its first release back in 2020, this game has grown quite a lot. From the introduction of new maps, new ghosts and new mechanics… Each update brings something new and unique to this game. And on top of that, this game also has unique events during those special holidays like Easter, Halloween and Christmas.

Now, the best thing that got added in this game is the custom difficulty. The base difficulties are extremely well crafted and nicely balanced, but with the custom difficulty you can set up the game to your liking and the rewards will adjust to that. You can even disable the hunts when you are still learning, but you won’t get any rewards. Since, there is no risk… But, you can challenge yourself by disabling evidences entirely and figuring out the ghost purely from behavior. And yes, that’s totally possible.

The amount of things you can change with these custom difficulties is just insane. From player speed, ghost roaming, amount of evidence, cursed object, hunt duration… It’s just insane. It made a really replayable game even more replayable. This game is currently walking a fine line of having enough challenge and depth… and it’s walking on it like a boss.

After watching so much video’s on this game and playing it for 30 hours, I feel like I still haven’t seen everything that this game has to offer. And each major update changes so many things that it changes the whole meta of the game sometimes. For example, in the recent updates, we got weekly challenges. These are challenges that the developers prepared for you. All of these challenges have a unique set-up, like not being able to use items that require electricity or batteries. They are all on a fixed map, and you lose nothing when you fail a round. But if you beat the challenge three times, you get a huge cash reward (in-game, of course).

Another example is the newest cursed item. In this game, there are several cursed objects that can aid you to find the ghost, but have some dire consequences when used. If you think objects like the Ouija board or a voodoo doll, you are spot on. Earlier this year, we got the Monkey Paw. This paw is basically an evil genie. You get 5 wishes (less on higher difficulties) and these can range from wishing to trap the ghost or have a wrong evidence crossed out. Yet, each wish has a very negative side effect, making you choose your wishes carefully.

And looking at their roadmap for the remainder of this year and next year, we are going to get a total overhaul of the evidence gathering, new equipment, new ghost and player models, new tasks, new locations and much more. It’s quite tricky to find any negatives on this game, to be honest, since a lot of things that I want to see changed are coming in future updates anyway.

In this game, the balance of everything is just perfect. You don’t always get direct confirmation of the evidences and you have really have to use your knowledge of the game and it’s mechanics to the max in order for you to survive. But, if you don’t want to play on the higher difficulties and risk all the stuff you worked so hard for, there is barely any content locked out from the easier difficulties. The main differences are the speed of the sanity drain, the amount of sanity restoration you get from pills, the length of the safe time, if the breaker starts off or on, if you get insurance if you die… and if the ghost can change favorite room or not. But, you can always mix and match via the custom difficulty.

Small team

It still surprises me that the core team for this game is around 4 people. The amount of depth, polish and love that has been put into this game is just insane. Not only does this game have a VR version, it’s also coming to consoles later this year. With cross play.

Sometimes when I see this game and look at other games from small studio’s, I either see overambitious unpolished messes or extremely polished small gems. Yet, this studio manages to create an experience like no other. A polished, large game that can be replayed for hours upon hours.

Also, this game looks perfectly. It doesn’t go for the hyperrealistic look, but it goes for that realistic yet game-y look. And it nails that perfectly. The houses and locations are extremely detailed and actually feel real. Especially the Sunny Meadows map, man… That’s an impressive map. It also has some places where you really can get spooked.

In terms of animations, this game is also very good. It has unique and recognizable animations. Some are just a bit silly, especially the player animations when crouched, but it adds to the charm. The best animations can be seen during the hunts and ghost events/interactions. Seeing a ghost running towards you is scary and tense.

Combine this with extremely strong audio design, this game is just polished. If you play this game online, you can play this game as if you were really investigating those area’s. As soon as you walk away from somebody, their mic gets more and more silent. So, you will have to use walky-talkies. But, what if you don’t have a mic? Well, the things that require a mic for interaction in this game also have a non-mic option. So, you don’t get excluded there.

Now, this game is also quite a lot of fun as a single player game. When I moved houses, I didn’t had great internet access for a while. And I had a lot of fun playing through various rounds of Phasmophobia after work. Currently, it has become one of those games I boot up once in a while to play a match or two and try to better my skills by learning the unique traits of each ghost.

To be honest, it’s quite hard to find things to complain about in this game. There aren’t too many glitches in this game nor are there too many mechanics that feel unfun. For example, you can only see the map in the truck that’s parked at the start. This can be annoying on bigger maps but this encourages team work since that map in the truck works as a sort of radar. Also, it can be annoying that the sprint is a bit weak in this game… But, this way you have to use it wisely and save it for hunts.

You’d argue that it would be helpful that when writing things down in the journal like when an evidence is found should be global…. But then again, this encourages team work and communication. In most cases I felt that everything negative I could say about this game, I could also see a reason why it’s that way. But that doesn’t mean that I do have some constructive criticism to give.

The following might be irrelevant when they rework photo evidence but currently, I feel it’s a bit unclear which pictures give you money and which ones don’t. Also, it’s unclear what you need to do to get a higher rating for the pictures. I’m curious to see what the rework of the pictures is going to bring but that’s indeed one area that needs a rework.

Another area that could use a rework in my opinion is the shop and the load out system. It’s a big improvement from the previous system but currently it’s a bit messy in terms of UI. It especially gets messy when you want to clear out the truck if you have stocked too many items. It’s also a pain to remove just one item after you have stocked the truck. I feel that the UI isn’t intuitive enough. The shop tab should become it’s own menu and the load outs as well. And then you should have “load truck” tab. Where you can more easily load items into the truck.

Other minor things that could improve are for example:

• a way to see all daily and weekly challenges in the journal.
• an overview on how much risk you have for that round. Since, you loose all the items you contributed if you die.
• a way to review the last round stats again after you clicked away from it.
• an easy way to reset some games in the lobby. Like the Jenga tower.

But one of the biggest things that needs a rework is when you die. Apart from being able to pick up items and throw them, there isn’t anything to do. Of course, it’s unclear for the other players if the item is thrown by a dead player or the ghost…Unless you know where the item comes from or where the ghost can throw. When I died during our multiplayer sessions I honestly got a bit bored. But, it’s a tricky thing to rework since what are you going to rework it too. What are you going to allow or have the dead players do? Maybe a bit more activities around the map would be great. Like in the lobby have a basketball and a hoop outside?

Now, some of you might have noticed that I haven’t talked about the music of this game. That’s because apart from the cursed item the music box, there is no music in this game. This can be a turn off for some but on the other hand, I’m glad that there isn’t any music. Since this game is so replayable, I’m afraid that if this game had music, it would become way to repetitive and the sometimes short rounds wouldn’t help there at all.

So, all in all, if you enjoy puzzle and/or horror games… I highly recommend this game. It’s biggest flaw is that it’s quite overwhelming and not everything is documented in the game… but it’s also it’s biggest strength. It’s a game where the more you play, the fun doesn’t come from figuring out the mysteries of the game and starts from coming to use all the knowledge you gained to try and figure everything out. Because of things like the custom difficulties, there is something here for everyone and for every skill level.

The frequent updates that this games gets and the very open way that the developers are listening to the community, it’s a game that I’m happy I discovered. I can’t wait to see how you are going to react on the streams since I can’t wait to play more from this masterfully crafted puzzle horror game together with my friends since it’s one of the best ways to play this game. But, it’s also a lot of fun in single player.

And with that said, I have said everything I want to say about this game for now. I want to thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed reading this one as much as I enjoyed writing it and I hope to be able to welcome you in another one. Have a great rest of your day and take care!

Game Quicky: Snow Problem (PC – Steam) ~ Sorting The Snow

Steam store page

It’s winter. So, that means that snow is falling. Snow is something you can’t stop and that might cause a problem. But, not in this game. In this game, the concern is that we need a certain amount of colored snow to beat the level before the time limit is up. This game is created by Dave Seaman from whom I reviewed games in the past. He was the developer behind The Rat Pack and Captain Disaster in: Death Has A Million Stomping Boots. Is the 3rd game I’m going to review from him a recommendation or is it one where he swings a miss. Let’s find out together in this Game Quicky article. For full disclosure, the developer provided me with a press key to play this game, but you may rest assured that you’ll get my 100% honest opinion on this game. And as usual, I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article.

Let’s save the snow

This game is the perfect easy to understand game. This game is perfect for small sessions when you have a bit of time to kill. The levels in this game are short and easy to understand, so it has that one more round mentality.

The controls are extremely easy. You basically only need the mouse to control this game. While there are keyboard shortcuts for the menu, the game is played with the mouse. It’s a little finicky at first to know at what speed you need to draw the lines, since the faster you go… The more holes there are in your line.

The biggest challenge in this game is to know where and how to draw your lines. Since, momentum is still a thing, so you really need to be careful so that you don’t screw yourself over by drawing a bad line. That’s why on the store page the developer recommends playing with a mouse… Since, this game with a trackpad, auwch. I tried it, and it wasn’t so much fun anymore.

To get used to the game, I highly recommend that you put the prep time to the highest setting in the main menu. The game can be pretty challenging and turn into a trail and error puzzle game, but the short prep time is really irritating if you aren’t used to the game. But, if you want more challenge, you can switch the difficulty easily by changing the prep timer.

A lot of the music in this game is famous classical music and, while I would have loved some original pieces by the developer as well, they fit the game perfectly. There are various tracks which play randomly in the background. It’s almost like you have your favorite music app playing a playlist in the background. Maybe it would be fun if the name of the track shows up somewhere and there is a sort of mini-player. But, that’s possibly a bit of a wild idea.

There is also a level editor in this game. So, that means you can share self created levels with other players. There is no Steam Workshop integration, but if that ever comes it would be nuts. But, the level files are small and easy to share… And the developer invites you to share your levels with him and who knows, they might be added as bonus levels in a future update.

Now, if you are unsure about this game… There is even a demo out of this game. So, you can easily try it before you decide to buy this game for the low price of 4€. You can also bring your progress of the demo to the full game which is an amazing feature.

There are also adorable punny Steam achievements in this game. They are extremely easy to get, but the pun filled nature really adds to the charm of this game.

Something I really like is how you don’t need to play all the levels in order. I really dislike the 21st level. I have tried various times to beat it, but I’m unable to. But, since you always have a handful of levels unlocked, you can just skip that level and keep it for later. You also unlock the next levels so, you don’t have to worry that one level will block you from seeing the rest of the game.

But not all is good in this game, sadly, I do have a few things to criticize.

Let the snow melt

There are a few minor issues in this game. First, there isn’t a safe way to alt-tab out of the game. Usually, when you use alt-tab OR the Windows key to go back to the desktop, you can quickly look something up on the internet and return to the game. Not in this game, since when you re-open it… The resolution goes off, and all color is drained. I had this issue on three laptops I tested this game on. So, be careful if you alt-tab.

But, that’s a minor point. Since the levels are rather short and the game opening so fast, it’s easy to recover from that. Something that I do find a bit disappointing is that there is no pause feature during gameplay or a speed-up feature. Several times I was tapping my fingers on my desk because I knew I was going to beat the level, but I had to wait until it had played out.

Something I’d personally change is that the “how to play” is something that appears before you play your first level. While the gameplay is pretty simple, it didn’t click for me right away. It was easy to figure out after a bit of messing around, but I find it strange that this game has a sort of tutorial but hides it in the main menu.

Which brings me to something else, and it’s something I also have a solution for. This game doesn’t have a colorblind mode. And this is a big issue in this game since this game is highly based on color. One solution is to drastically change the colors OR use different shapes somehow. Like squares that aren’t filled or triangles. Or a 3rd solution is that you can see the color of the snowflake when you hover over it… But, that might not be too handy in the short levels. Now that I think about it, I think drastically changing the colors when somebody enables colorblind mode would be the best solution.

A minor thing I’d love to see changed as well is that after the prep timer ran out and the snow starts falling, that timer turns into a timer that shows for how long the snow will fall. While you have a little more time than there is snow falling, it would just be an additional touch on the game.

Something I have to bring up in the negatives is that this game can be repetitive for some people. That’s because this game only has “one” mechanic. You can only draw those brown lines to try to guide the snow to the spot you want too. I have a few ideas for other mechanics like having to draw those colored lines yourself OR having weight switches to open another path. And wouldn’t it be cool if there were levels where you have to avoid ANY snow from reaching the bottom? There is a lot more that can be done with this game and maybe food for thought for a sequel or spin-off? Or maybe DLC?

The final nitpick I have is, that ALT+F4 isn’t working. Only the assigned keys in the menu’s are working and that can throw you off when you forget about that. I got used to it, but it was a bit annoying sometimes when I accidentally alt-tab’ed out of the game to write this article and I had to force shutdown the game via task manager.

The final suggestion I’d give is that in the main menu… It would be amazing to see a small level preview pop-up when you hover over the level. It would be handy if you want to let your friends try a level without you having to click through all the levels you think that it is.

And with that said, I think it’s high time I wrap up this article. So, in conclusion…

But, what’s the snow quality

Overall, this is a very charming and relaxing game. While it has some rough edges, I think it’s honestly worth it’s €4 price tag. This game is the perfect time waster to waste a few minutes. It can be addictive as well. The game is easy to understand, and it has that “one more try” and “one more level” atmosphere to it.

There are a lot more things that can be done with this game, like more mechanics to spice up the puzzles but like I said in the article. But, the basis of an amazing charming little puzzle game is here. I’d recommend it to everybody who enjoys puzzle and/or casual games. Since, this might be right up your alley. It’s also perfect for to get into gaming in the first place.

I think this will be a game I’ll boot up once in a while to beat a few levels and move on. Especially, when my other games are downloading updates for example. Or I’d boot it up when I want to wind down. Since, I felt very relaxed while playing this game.

Snow Problem is another game by Dave Seaman with a lot of charm I had a blast playing. I’m really glad that the developer asked me to play this game since otherwise I might have just written it off as a silly little game, but under the hood you have a nice relaxing puzzle game.

And that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading 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: 7,5/10

Game Quicky: Cube Grid (PC – Steam) ~ Rolling Around On The Grid

Steam store page – Official website

To be honest, the mobile games that attract me the most are the simple and easy to understand mobile games. When I play a game on my phone, it’s mostly to waste time while waiting for my train or something along those lines. It’s rare that I play bigger mobile games. When the small German indie studio Alchemical reached out to me with a press code for their newly released Steam port of Cube Grib, I was directly interested. So, in this article you’ll read my 100% honest opinion on the game and if I would recommend it or not. Also, this isn’t the studio’s first game, so, feel free to look at their website if you are looking for other mobile games to try out. In any case, let’s start this game quicky while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article.

Editorial note: I played v1.0.1 for this review.

The good cubes

There is no silly story in this game. This could be seen as a bummer to some people, but this game gets into the meat of the gameplay right away. The tutorial explains the game wonderfully, and you can dive right into the game.

The idea of this game is that you have to flip each colored tile while your cube is in the right color. Moving over a full colored tile flips it to a “square” tile (since there is a square drawn on it with that color). Moving over a “square” tile with the same color, flips it back to a full colored one. Which means, you have to reflip it before you can finish the level.

This game is a textbook example of being difficult to explain in text and better to see in action. Sadly, the trailer on the Steam page gives the wrong impression. There, the tiles turn black and this is something that doesn’t happen in the game. Since, that’s how it works in the mobile version. In this, somewhat enhanced PC-version, there are a few improvements that make this game even more enjoyable. Like more control options and being visual a bit better. Also, there are achievements in this version. Something that a lot of people adore, myself included. I find it fun to get these achievements when I do or reach certain things in games.

Now, the mobile version is free. This version costs 4 bucks. This is something you can look at in both ways. As a negative and a positive. Personally, I think this game is worth the price of admission, but I would love to see more features in the future to make it stand out more compared to the free version on mobile.

The controls are quite responsive. They are easy to learn but sometimes a bit tricky to master. For some reason, I messed up sometimes. But, quite sure that’s on me. Since the unique viewing angle of the stage made me mess up my directions sometimes. And to help with that, this game has an undo button that doesn’t count for one additional move. Sadly, you can only undo one move. So, if you want to undo more than one move, you are out of luck.

Visually, this game looks amazing. This game looks clean and isn’t “loud”. Even when you don’t understand English, you can play this game easily. The (UI) design is that good. In addition to that, the audiovisual presentation is great as well. The sound effects and music add so much to the game’s atmosphere. There are a few minor moments that miss sound effects, especially menu interactions but that’s so minor that it didn’t really bother me.

Speaking of visual presentation, you can choose the cube you play as. The amount of stars you earn at the end of each level are currency in the shop you can access from the main menu. In there, you can exchange your stars for a new cube you can play as. This is nothing more than just a visual change, but it is a nice feature that gives a bit of diversity to this game.

This game introduces the special mechanics in a pleasant way. The difficulty curve of this game is excellent, and I have nothing to remark about it. Each level provides a new challenge and the further you go, the more mechanics you’ll have to keep in mind. For example, around the 20th level you get introduced to the “timed tile”. So, when you touch that tile with the right color, you have a certain amount of moves before it reflips. So, keep these tiles as the last tile, so you can win the level.

The fact that there is no time limit or punishment if you take like “a million” moves to clear the level makes this game such an amazing title to wind down.

The bad cubes

There are a few minor issues in this Steam port. Let me talk about the controller controls first. You can control this game with a controller, and it works really well. But, controlling the menu’s and UI of the game isn’t possible. In the latest update, a controller button was added to rewind a move or restart the stage but going to the home menu isn’t possible.

Speaking of the controls, in during the levels you see a “WASD” lay-out. But the game doesn’t recognize another keyboard lay-out. So, I’m sitting here with my Belgian “AZERTY” lay-out being a bit annoyed that it’s not showing “ZQSD”. But that’s a minor nitpick since the arrow buttons work as well and that’s how I mostly played this game.

Now, there is no hint system in this game. So, if you are stuck in a certain puzzle, you can’t have any hints. Granted, developing a hint system for this type of game is quite tricky. How would you implement a hint system without it making the game quite easy or “play itself”. Here is an idea, just like in Quell, you have to pay a certain amount of coins to either see the full solution or set you on your way. And how would you earn these coins in this game? Well, maybe there is on or two hidden in each stage, and you have to click on a certain tile OR the amount of stars makes you earn a certain amount of coins?

Now, the tutorials in this game are excellent. Nothing to criticize about that. But, if you display a text box over the game, make it so that the game can’t be played in the background, or you can create weird edge cases that might break your game.

Something that’s really missing in this game is a colorblind mode. Take a game like Tetris Attack on the SNES, in this game each tile has a symbol on it, so colorblind people can easily recognize which tile is which color. In this game, each color can have its own symbol and the cube to switch color can be a similar shape, so it’s easy to distinguish. And if possible, make it an option so that people who find the mode annoying can turn it off.

There is one feature I’d love to see in a new update. In Invincible Cleopatra, there is a bar to the side of your screen that shows how close you are to perfecting the level. This is something that isn’t in this game. So, when you beat the level, it’s always waiting to see if you do or don’t get all three stars.

The conclusion

I might have written a lot of negative things about this game or things that are a bit broken/unpolished. Yet, most of these things can be patched out of the game with a (few) updates, making this game even more fun to play.

Maybe I’m a bit harsh on the game, and maybe I should look at this game for what it is. A love project where a small team of developers poured their hart and soul into. And that’s something you can clearly see.

While this game has a few shortcomings, I still would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys casual puzzle games. Or if you are looking for a simple but challenging (puzzle) game to wind down, this game is something for you.

If you are really interested in this game, I’d buy the Steam version. Since, you throw some money to the developers and that might motivate them to create an even better version or create more games. If you are unsure, you can give the mobile version a try and decide then.

In summary, this game is good and with some additional polishing it can become even better. Most of the issues I have with this game aren’t that big and can be implemented without a lot of effort. Overall, I think this game is an enjoyable time waster and I can’t wait to see which improvements the future brings.

And that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. 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.

Score: 80/100

Game Quicky: Pnevmo-Capsula: Domiki (PC – Steam) ~ Riding The Message

Steam store page

Today, I want to talk about a game called Pnevmo-Capsula: Domiki. A sort of interactive rollercoaster set in the old Soviet Russia. A game was created by a tiny team that created and published their first game. The developers reached out to me with a press code and asked me to write my 100% honest opinion on the game. So, is this game worth our time and our money, or should the developers try something else for their next project? Or should they stop creating games in the first place? That’s what I’m going to try and figure out in this article. And as usual, I invite to you leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of this article.

Riding the message

This game is really simple to understand. There are two sections in this game. The riding and the puzzle-solving section. In the riding section, you can control the cart quite easily left and right. You’ll have to look out for holes in the tracks and maybe use different routes to overcome the hole. You’ll also have to disable electric gates, which you can do with your electric shock ability at the end of the wire of the electric gate.

This electric ability is also how you interact with puzzles. Almost all the puzzles are the exact same. You have to start a machine and then figure out the four numbers of the recipient of the message. This might sound boring and repetitive, but the puzzles are all well crafted and fun to solve. I was so happy that I had two monitors, so I could take a screenshot of the list of possible numbers to aid me in solving the puzzle.

These two styles of gameplay give the game a lot of variation. There are eight chapters in this game, and whenever you mess up, you start at the beginning of the chapter. But, everything is still unlocked. So, for example, when you opened several gates… These will stay open when you respawn. This might be a useful trick for speedrunners.

In terms of visuals, this game looks amazing. I have seen games that look several times worse at this price point. There are some rough textures, like at the start of the 2nd chapter and somewhere in the 3rd on the telephone pole, but these moments were far and few in between. The camera work is really stunning. The only thing I would improve a bit is making it a bit more clear when you are at the right spot to interact with a puzzle, gate, or something.

The music and sound effect are decent. Nothing too special in my opinion, but I feel they are good enough to fit the atmosphere and setting of this game. But something else that’s mind-blowing is how, after the first chapter, there are no loading screens in the whole game. And respawning only takes a couple of seconds.

The message is lost

In this game, you play as a capsule. You’re riding on a railroad towards your final location to deliver various messages. That’s the story of this game. Sadly enough, that’s literally IT in terms of story. Apart from some world-building with the puzzles, there is no real story in this game. Why are we delivering messages in this manner? It’s such a shame that for a game that looks as nice as this, there is no real story present.

I don’t mind games that are short in nature. Creating a game is quite difficult, and making unique puzzles is a tricky thing to do. But the runtime of this game is a real shame. This game took me only 2 hours to beat TWICE. Yes, twice. There are no different endings or different ways to beat the game. So yeah, the mechanics and ideas in this game are seriously under-explored.

In general, the controls are good. Yet, there are some things that can be polished up. First of all, you can speed up with the left-hand shift key. And if you have a right-hand shift key, well, that doesn’t work to speed up. Secondly, sometimes in bends, the key I was using to go forward didn’t move the cart forward and almost got stuck. And finally, apart from interacting with the space bar… there is no real “break” button for your cart.

There are some minor things I would have improved as well. For example, it’s quite tricky to control the puzzles in some cases. It’s not always clear what you can do and how to move in the puzzle itself. I think it would be a lot better if you could use the mouse during these sections. Since the mouse is on-screen and can only be used in the menus.

The UI in this game is good, but sometimes it does strange things like not remembering your language. But, the options’ menu is lacking in my opinion. You can disable the music, but there is no volume slider. So, you can’t disable the sound effects, either. The resolutions are quite strange as well. There is a 7680*4320 resolution? Also, the buttons are clickable from anywhere on the screen as long as you are at the same height as them.

But the BIGGEST no-no this game makes is when you finish the game and restart from an earlier chapter, be careful with your save then. Since, as soon as you beat a chapter… All your other progress gets erased. For example, you have beaten chapter 6 and want to replay chapter 1. So, you go back to the main menu, choose chapters, and start chapter one. You finish chapter one, and you go back to the main menu, to start chapter 6… You’ll notice that only chapters 1 and 2 are unlocked! Thankfully, the game is short, so you can go right ahead to the location you were in, but if the game were longer this would have been a grave issue.

A less grave issue is that there is no continue option in the main menu. That’s a bit of polish this game lacks. Like, the strange jitter effect you get when you ram into an electric gate. Or the fact, that you don’t get a visual notification when you finish a chapter besides going through a gate that closes behind you. And the final thing of lacking polish is that only going from chapters 1 to 2, you have a loading screen. When you start from any other point, you’ll get a black screen… Yeah.

And that’s honestly everything I could say about this game. So, I think it’s high time to wrap up this article with the conclusion.

Should the message be delivered?

This game is a decent game for the low price point of €9. But, at its current point, I wouldn’t pay anything more. Especially for the extremely short length of this game. There is so much more that could have been done with the concept and mechanics. For example, a puzzle where you have to deliver several messages in a certain order. Or having to open/close gates.

Besides that, like every other game… This game has some other flaws. Apart from the quirkiness with the chapters, I explained earlier, most of these negatives can be polished with a patch. Apart from the lacking story, of course.

If you enjoy casual puzzle games, I would certainly give this game a look. But, to the developers, I would say, keep working on this game. Keep expanding it with new content and mechanics. If this is your first released game, I would have to say bravo. There is a lot of potential here, and I would love to see longer and more in-depth experiences.

For a small passion project, this game turned out amazing. But, I want to see this game become more than a passion project. Since, when I had beaten the game, I felt cheated. I wanted to see more, play more, but it was over when I was really getting into it.

And with the said, 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 to another one. Until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 3/5

Game Quicky: Mystik Belle – Enchanted Edition (Switch) ~ The Metroidvania Witchschool Adventure

Nintendo.com microsite – Wikipedia entry

So, I was browsing the Nintendo Switch eShop one day and I came across this game. Without doing a lot of research, I bought it since it looked like an interesting indie Metroidvania game. I didn’t know that a big studio like WayForward helped the developers Last Dimension in publishing this game to the Nintendo Switch. For some reason, I didn’t realize that this game is a port either. Even with the subtitle “Enchanted Edition”. In any case, I was also surprised to learn that this game is created in GameMaker Studio. A tool I used to learn about game development when I was younger. But, with that said, how is the actual game? Is it worth your money or should you rather focus on the original edition or is this a game you could skip without hesitation? Well, I’m here to give you my opinion and while 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 this article.

Witchschool

Usually, I write something myself to explain the story. But, the way the developers described the story is so good, I’m going to quote it here:

Being a student of mysterious art is a daunting task, doubly if you are Bell McFay – a freshman at the Hugmore Magic School. The teachers and staff are mean, I have few friends, and my grades are poor. Worst of all – Bell tends to be in the wrong place at worst. When she stayed up late to practice the magic of fire, for example tonight, but was instead assembled to confuse ancient rituals. And is there a better way to punish the unlucky first-grader than to prosecute her for an impossible job on the worst night of the year? Reproduce or exile Walpurgisnacht Brew. The sound of expulsion is beginning to improve as all types of spies hijack the school.

Official story on the eShop page

There is no voice acting in this game, so the story is told through text boxes and the environment design. Overall, the writing in this game is good. It sets up the arc of the game nicely without a lot of technobabble to pull you out of the experience. It’s quite difficult to review the story of this game because this game is somewhat short. This game takes around 5-ish hours to beat.

Usually, in these short games, I expect the story to grip me and focus more on telling a good story with interesting mechanics like Super Liminal or There Is No Game. Yet, this game doesn’t do that. I’m not saying that the story is bad, it’s just that this game focuses more on the gameplay and it’s puzzles than the overall story. This isn’t such a big negative in my eyes. While, yes, the setting and the atmosphere gives the story a lot of potential… I’m just extremely happy that it’s not bloated or is just filler to make the game longer. It’s to the point and quite enjoyable.

This game almost plays like your typical Metroidvania game. If you don’t know what a Metroidvania game is, compare it to games like Monster Tale, Blossom Tales, Lenna’s Inception amongst others. You explore large area’s where you learn new skills and abilities to help you on the way and discover secrets. Now, what this game does special is that this game has also a focus on puzzle elements and a whole inventory mechanic. In extremely rough terms, this game is a giant fetch quest in a Metroidvania game.

And it’s a lot of fun. I love exploring the school and trying to figure out which abilities I’m going to get to explore more of the castle. The responsive controls were so easy to learn that I was able to get the hang of the mechanics quite easily. The only thing that is different compared to your typical Metroidvania games is that there are no save rooms in this game. The game autosave when you change rooms. But that’s anything but a negative, to be honest.

Now, there are two ways to play this game. You can play through this game with warp chests, that help you with your inventory and makes the game a bit easier. It also gives you the option to choose if you restart the room or start from the counsel room. Or you have the harder difficulty, where you don’t have: warp chests, restart the room and the enemies hit harder. So, you can play on the difficulty you enjoy.

I really love shooting my fire spell around and leveling it up when I killed more enemies. I really liked running around this school with the amazing pixel art and animation. The game looks amazing, and the level design is well done for a Metroidvania game. While the level design makes the school feel less like a school since you don’t see a lot of classrooms and weird architecture, the pixel art is so good-looking and well-designed that it doesn’t bother me at all. (Only my really harsh critic side, tho.)

Not only does the game have amazing visuals and animations, the music is a jam. It’s amazing chiptune by Dan Rogers. I have listened to it while writing this article and I liked it so much that I decided to buy the whole soundtrack from Dan Roger’s Bandcamp I linked earlier.

Something that’s quite impressive is that this game is the love child of Andrew Bado. He placed so much love and care into the game. I mean, he even made an option where the dialogue is child-friendly in the PC version. Yes, an option! That’s something I can applaud. If only this came to the Switch version.

Almost there, Bell

I have thrown quite a lot of praise towards this game, but I’m sad to say that this game does make a few mistakes or things I don’t like. Let me first talk about the health system. There is one thing I didn’t like at all. That’s the way you heal. To heal, you have to pick up hearts that can randomly drop from enemies. The hearts drop where you kill the enemy. So, if you kill the enemy while it’s in the wall, since your projectiles go through into the wall… Your health pick-up is going to be stuck in the wall. And those don’t get attracted when you get close.

Also, there is no “quick heal” method or room. The health you have is the health you start with when you respawn or restart the room. So, when you are low on health, you better find a room where you can grind enemies to grind the health drops to get back to full health. This is one of the few moments where the game just stopped in its tracks, to be honest. Granted, you could restart at the counsel room with full health, but then you have to backtrack all the way… That isn’t fun.

Now, here is something I really found annoying. This game has an amazing mini-map, but why can’t I look at it with more detail? In this game, you have to gather and manage a lot of items. Around 60 in fact. And they are spread out over the whole map. But, remembering which item goes where is a real pain. Either having a quest list and/or which character is where it could have helped so much. Thankfully, the map is rather small, so going through all of it and trying out which item goes where wasn’t such a pain. Yet, I really missed a feature a like that in this game.

Sadly enough, there is actually a second thing I don’t like about the health system. There is this mechanic where you are able to kill enemies by just colliding with them. But this costs health. Now here is the issue with that, the sound effect and visual feedback is so similar to normally killing enemies it’s confusing. Something to improve this would be another sound effect if Belle gets hit compared to when she kills an enemy. Since, overall, the sound effects are excellent.

One of the final things I want to talk about is the pacing. In this game, you need to get three ingredients and something that really surprised me is that the second act is short. But this is an extremely minor complaint, a nitpick even. As big as a nitpick as the I find it a shame that some nice designs like statues go to waste since they are mostly in the dark. But, then again, it adds to the atmosphere and gives off a slightly creepy vibe.

Now, I think it’s high time for the conclusion, don’t you think? A summary of what I think in general about this game and trying to answer the questions I asked in the introduction of this article.

Let’s play or let’s play?

Is this game worth your time? Yes, yes it is! While the game has some annoying things like I talked about in the previous section, I really think that the positives highly outweigh the negatives for this game.

Now, if you would ask me… Which version should I play? Then, I have to answer the enchanted edition on Switch. It’s quite difficult to answer what’s new in this version since you don’t have an official change log but reading from the Twitter feeds of the developers it seems that it’s mostly a graphical upgrade and various tweaks to make the experience more enjoyable.

It also looks like this game is going to have a sequel or expansion from what I’m reading on the developers twitter feed.

I’m so glad that I gave this game a chance, since because of this game I discovered a very passionate developer that loves creating charming games like this one. I really enjoyed my time with this game, trying to figure out which item goes where. While it’s tempting to use a walkthrough, I highly advise that you don’t. There is barely any moon logic in this game, and it feels so much more rewarding to play it blind.

The charm of this game is just amazing. Mystik Belle is a hidden gem that more people should know of and play. This game has so much potential even while I haven’t finished the original, I’m already hyped for new content that’s upcoming.

And with that said, 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!

Game Quicky: Superliminal (Switch) ~ Objects are differently shaped than they appear.

Nintendo.com microsite – Wikipedia entry

I remember seeing a game floating around on the internet many years ago. I even bookmarked the page I saw it on, since I wanted to keep myself up-to-date on future updates. It looked extremely cool and had a lot of potential to have amazing puzzles and mind binding twists. But that was in 2014-2015 if I remember correctly. Then, I honestly forgot about the game, and it fell off my radar. Not too long ago, I was cleaning out my overload of bookmarks and I suddenly found that game again. That reminded me about the game and when I suddenly saw it on my Nintendo Switch eShop that evening, I knew that I had to buy it right away. So, the game released a year ago, and I totally forgot about it. Oh well, that’s no big deal. Since, now, I have a lot of time to find out if my expectations were correct or if I shouldn’t have started playing this game. Now, while I have beaten the game now, I’m going to review this game in my game quicky style of articles since it’s rather short. But more on that later, let’s find out if this game is good or not, while I invite you to leave a comment with your thoughts and/or opinions in the comment section down below.

Objects are better shaped than they appear.

In this game, you are taken on a trip to the Pierce Institute to help test a new technology. This new technology is to help people with therapy using dreams. In these dreams, you can manipulate objects in some very strange ways. But, since this is a video game, something goes wrong. Instead of waking up, you get stuck inside the dream world due to Emergency Exit Protocol failing for whatever reason. So, it’s up to you to figure out why and to leave the dreamworld.

Now, I wish I could say more, but it would spoil the amazing story and strong message that this game has. This game is, give or take, 3 hours long if you only want to beat it and not 100% complete it. The story telling and voice acting in this game is so well crafted. The game spoke to me on a personal level several times. The game is also filled with some amazing life advice, and I’m so glad I played through it.

The main mechanic in this game is that perspective matters. A lot. You can enlarge or shrink certain objects in this game, so you can reach higher ledges or jump over huge gaps. The best way I can explain it, is if you go away from objects, they appear to “shrink” and when you get closer, they appear to “enlarge”. Now, image that when the “shrinking” or “enlarging” is happening, the object actually takes those dimensions. So, suddenly the cheese wheel can become a giant ramp for you to walk on. If you don’t really understand what I’m trying to explain here, take a look at these gifs, I think they might explain it way better.

• 

• 

I’m not going to show more or explain more of the mechanics since, it would ruin the surprises and the unique and amazingly crafted puzzles that this game has. This game can become quite tricky, but remember, it’s all a matter of having the right perspective and understanding the space you are in. Each section introduces its own unique spin or mechanic on the perspective puzzle theme, and it’s just great. I had so much fun trying to figure them all out.

Something that surprised me is that with the various elements that this game has and with the unique shrink/enlarge mechanics, it’s so well optimized. I didn’t experience any slowdowns nor did I experience any graphical glitches. Now, this is when you play the game normally. And why am I saying this? Well, it’s because the game actually encourages you to speedrun it once or twice. The Steam achievements of this game are ported over to the Nintendo Switch version. And I think I might give it a go myself one day. The controls of this game are solid enough and I think they are responsive enough for me to speedrun this game. I learned them extremely quickly and mastered them fast as well.

It would be an amazing way to dive right back into this amazing adventure and to go through the well detailed levels again. Visually, this game is stunning. While I think that the game has some moments that might trigger players that aren’t too good with flashing lights, I was amazed with the detail and visual presentation that this game has. The game also has a lot of triggers, so you don’t softlock yourself. For example, if you shrink the exit door and throw it in a trash can, the exit door spits it right back out. One animation detail I loved is seeing all the different jokes the developer made with the loading screens. You’ll have to see it to understand what I mean, but they were a nice way to do something unique with a loading screen instead of having a boring static or short moving image…

Apart from the objects you can interact with, this game doesn’t have a lot of animations. But, the animations it does have pulled you into the game so much more. Including with the enjoyable sound design. It has been at least a month since I have beaten this game since I’m writing this article and I can still remember the sound effects, how the voice acting sound and how the music sounds.

Speaking about the music, most of the soundtrack of this game is extremely relaxing and sounds extremely dreamy. The great use of the piano and, which is the center instrument in this soundtrack, and it’s just lovely. It’s that lovely, I actually bought the game again on Steam since it includes the soundtrack and some official Lo-Fi remixes as DLC.

Objects are worse shaped than they appear.

So far, I’m talking quite positively about this game. While I enjoy this game an awful lot and I even dare to say that it wouldn’t surprise me that I put it on my top 10 games of 2021 list, I do have several things that I disliked about this game and that made the experience less enjoyable.

While I barely experienced any bugs, I did fall three times through the map in similar ways. Once, I was pushed out of the map when I made a way too big object fall on me. Another time I fell through the map when getting on the roof of a building and trying to get onto the wall (which wasn’t the solution, by the way) and I don’t remember what triggered the 3_^rd time. Thankfully, the game autosave quite often, so I didn’t lose too much progress. But, it was a bit annoying that there is no death plane underneath the maps that automatically reset you to the latest checkpoint. So, thankfully, you have the “reset” option in the game.

Something I feel extremely mixed about is the game’s length. This game is so short but the mechanics it has, have so much potential, it’s a shame. I really think that this game should have a sequel where even trickier puzzles are introduced. On the other hand, due to the short length, the story has barely any bloat or unneeded sections and flows extremely nicely. Let’s just say that I’m quite jealous of the Steam workshop features that the PC version has. While it’s amazing that I can take this game on the go and show it off to other people, I’m also glad I bought the PC version to not only have the DLC but play more of this game.

Now, while I personally had a ton of fun with this game… When I really look at the game and take a step back… In terms of gameplay, this game could have been so much stronger. I honestly have to agree with what other critics are saying about this game to a certain degree. That some mechanics are seriously underused. Not to say that the puzzles in this game are bad, far from it. I think the biggest issue is that the games’ hooks are so good that the short length to conserve the story flow actually hurt it somewhat. I do heavily disagree with the “lackluster” story. But that’s maybe because it spoke to me on a personal level.

But, yeah, the underused mechanics are such a shame. Yet! Don’t care because it’s over, be happy that it happened. And maybe play some custom-made workshop levels via the Steam version. Meanwhile, I’m crossing my fingers for a sequel or DLC content to expand on the universe and lore of this game.

Objects’ true sizes

So, in conclusion. What do I think of the Switch version of this game? Is it worth your time, or should you buy another version or totally skip this game? Personally, I would highly recommend this game. But, do play it in one sitting. I personally think that the message that the story has it that much stronger when you get it all in one go.

The big novelty of the Switch version is that you can easily take it on the go. Of course, with the right laptop you can also take this game on the go, but the Switch is more convenient. But know that this game’s short length might annoy you, since like I explained earlier, the hooks of the game are that good. If you want to get the most out of this game, I think that the PC version might be the better option here, since it looks like it’s more actively developed, and it has the Steam Workshop with custom content!

Overall, this game does do a lot right. It has a strong story, fun and unique mechanics, amazing atmosphere, great visual presentation but due to some minor bugs and especially the short length, this game might be a difficult sell for some people. But if anything sounded interesting from what I have said in this article, please give this game a go. I really meant in what I said earlier. I wouldn’t surprise me if this game turns up in my top 10 games of 2021 list.

If you are interested in this game, I highly recommend going as blind as possible in this game. Reading too much about this game will ruin various surprises and twists this game takes. It’s like the Stanley Parable. A great short game that leaves so much impact on me as a player, and maybe it does with you too. And if it doesn’t have the same strong impact on you, you might have played a unique puzzle game that challenge your perception abilities and skills. Since, I think this game found the right perception.

What that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. I hope you enjoyed reading this article and 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

Want to read another review of this game? Well, visit my friend Indiecator, Dan or Magi and read his review here: https://indiecator.home.blog/2021/11/11/indietail-superliminal//

Android Games – Let’s start playing on my phone again.

It has been quite some time since I wrote an article with short reviews of Android games, has it not? Lately, I have been focussing on the bigger games and I haven’t given the smaller games some time to shine on my blog. Also, when I was talking about a smaller game, I wrote a longer article on it instead of a short review. But, since I’m currently working on bigger articles and I didn’t want to skip this week, I decided I wanted to bring this series back and start talking about a few smaller games I have been playing on my phone lately. So, let’s start talking about smaller Android games and let’s take a quick look if they are worth your time/money. Also, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and opinions on the games and/or the content of this article.

ProgressBar95

Steam version – Android version

For those who don’t know, I’m 28 years old, and I also have a day job. This day job is being an IT admin in a big art secondary school (high school for some) here in Belgium. My work days are filled with solving problems that teachers and students have, improving our IT infrastructure, developing our website… Apart from that, I’m also a big fan of old tech and I love messing around with old computers and technology.

So, when I came across ProgressBar95 on the app store, I downloaded the game right away. And I fell in love with it right away. The game keeps true to its tagline that this game is a “hypercasual UI game”. The main idea of this game is that you are a progress bar that needs to catch dropping squares to make the progress bar progress. Blue and light blue are good ones, orange are errors but still help you in progress. Pink detracts from your progress bar, so you can get rid of orange squares if you want.

Depending on how well you do, the amount of points you get to unlock various upgrades to your computer. The higher your level, the more difficult this game becomes and the more points you can earn. This game also works with lives, but if you run out of lives, you don’t have to wait a certain amount of time for them to recharge and try the game again.

So, the interface of this game is top-notch. It nails the ascetic of being a computer amazingly. For example, to toggle sound on or off, you can press the sound icon in the bottom right of the computer. If you click the “EN” of the language toolbar, you can switch languages. It also has a colorblind mode, cloud saving, multiple game modes and one of the best ways to handle microtransactions I have seen.

The different gameplay modes I have played so far is a sort infinite runner Wolfenstein game and a “dodge the red numbers and get to the bottom of an Excel spreadsheet”-game. They add so much variety to the game and I love going between them if I’m bored with one game mode.

The biggest recommendation I would give to you is that you buy the extremely cheap “no-ads” package. Overall, the ads aren’t annoying but the game improves so much without forced ads. Now, if you look at the whole shop, you might think that this game is a “pay-to-win” or a money sink. But, no. You can pay to unlock all other levels but 99% of the stuff in the store can be earned easily in-game by winning levels or doing side quests.

It’s clear that this game has a lot of love put into it and I have a hard time finding anything negative about this game. Apart from this game being extremely niche and the game being a little boring for extend playthroughs… But yeah, I honestly would recommend this game to all my other retro gamers or people who are into computer science. It’s an amazing and refreshing experience.

Score: 5/5.

Word Lanes

Android store

So, when I’m in a waiting room or have some time to kill, I love playing small games. Especially when they are puzzle games like word searches or connect the dots to give two examples.

In Word Lanes, you are presented with a grid of letters, and you have to find all the words that fit the clues at the top. Each letter can only be used once and the letters have to connect horizontally or vertically to be used in a word.

This game is rather relaxing, and it’s a great way for me to unwind. I also love how the game is fully translated into my native language. The only complaint I have about that is the fact that as a Belgian person, I always have to struggle when the hint is talking about something from the Netherlands. But, I always report them with a handy report feature after you solved a clue. With this report feature you can report typo’s, wrong clues and things like that.

I’m also on the fence about the microtransactions. You earn coins to use the hint features after beating a level, but I feel I always don’t have enough. Thankfully, you have these daily rewards and saving them up is easy then. Honestly, I just think that the prices of the power-ups are a tad bit too high.

But hey, that’s a minor complaint. Since this game has so much enjoyment to offer and the ads aren’t THAT intrusive and only play between levels. Also, quite frequently, I have an option where the ads are disabled for one day. This is amazing and actually makes me consider buying the “no ads” package since I got a free trial.

Score: 4/5

Reigns

Android store

Way back in 2017, I wrote an article about Questr. A game that has some “Tinder” style gameplay while being a questing game. Now, that game was more about adventuring while you created your party with a sort of Tinder app. In this game, the main feature of Tinder of swiping left to reject or right to approve, is set into a “choose your own adventure” game.

Reigns is published by DeveloperDigital and is so close to be amazing, it’s painful. The gameplay is quite addictive, and I love taking decisions as an immortal king on how my kingdom should progress. The atmosphere, sound effects, music and visual design is amazing. It really pulls you into the game and I love playing the game but…

It’s way too easy to take a decision. It’s too sensitive. I had several moments where I was choosing between two options and just because I hit the edge of one side a bit too much, the game decided for me. And not only that, my phone doesn’t have physical buttons anymore and quite often, I had the game deciding for me just because I swiped down to see the time or see my latest notification.

There is also no “message log”. So, when you put the game down for a moment, you can’t see the history of what happened. And if I want to change the options during gameplay, though luck. The menu only appears when see the progress between kings.

This game has a lot of amazing elements like having to balance your four powers and the various twists and turns certain decisions and pathways can take, but it has various rough edges, I fell so mixed about this game. Maybe the PC version of the game is better, but I feel like this game works best as a mobile game. But, I feel like the mobile version just got a few rough edges. For example, I had to look up a way to reset your progress in the game. It turns out you have to hold two fingers on to have the reset screen to show up.

Yet, I advise people who enjoy adventure games to give this game a go. But be warned, the mobile version has some rough edges. But, for the low asking price of this game and the amount of content in this game, I can say for a fact there is a LOT worse out there. And I’m also so glad that this amazing concept got a few sequels as well… So, I know what to play next on my phone.

Score: 3.5/5

Wrapping up

I’m so glad that I gave this format another go and revived it. It allowed me to talk about three Android games I wanted to showcase on my blog, but I didn’t have the time for or wasn’t able to write a good enough “long” article about. I think I’ll revisit this format more often in the future and maybe also use it when I play small games on Steam, Switch or other platforms.

Then again, with my busy lifestyle and the backlog of games I still want to cover, I can’t promise how frequent I’ll write articles like these. I also challenged myself to be brief and short in this article and I had the urge to keep writing about these three games. So, if you want a more in-depth article about one of these games, let me know in the comments.

So, with that said, 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 a future article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

First Impression: There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension (Switch) ~ Ceci n’est pas un article.

Wikipedia entry – Nintendo.com microsite – Developer site

There is no game here, so there is no article here. I have been searching everywhere in this game and I have found nothing. So, why am I writing about this then? Because I have no other game to write about, and I still want to write an article since it’s one of my biggest hobbies? Well, who knows. I can’t say, since there isn’t an expanded version of a game jam here. Maybe that section in the latest Nintendo Indie World was a lie. … Okay, I don’t think he is looking anymore. I think it’s time to let you in on a little secret. … There might be a game here. Shall we take a look at it? Come on, you and me. Let’s talk about this secret game while you sneakily go to the comment section after reading this article and tell me what you think about this game and/or the content of this article.

Ceci n’est pas une pipe

I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up the gag from the introduction paragraph through the whole article before it gets extremely stale and boring to read. No really, it might not be enjoyable at all. There would be loads of things that’ll be way more enjoyable to do. Like, read one of my articles or play a game. 

But, since you are still here, I think you want to poke around in the wrong dimension that’s part of the title right? Alright then, reader. In this game, you take on the role of “the user”. Explaining how your adventure gets started would spoil various gags that this game pulls with you and since I try to keep my content as spoiler free as possible, it gets quite tricky. 

The different chapters of this game can be a standalone episode in a series, but it still has an overarching plot. It tells a story about a certain game program that is convincing you that there is no game. But, some strange glitch is haunting him and messing things up for him, so maybe it’s time to set things right. 

You and the game program travel through the various wrong dimensions on your way home to set things right while having amazing humorous adventures throughout various game genres that poke fun at various elements of that genre. The amount of the sneaky references and the clever use in the gameplay and puzzles of this game is just amazing. 

When I said “various game genres”, you might think that this game has a lot of different gameplay styles. Well, this game is a point-and-click adventure. So, while you might be a Zelda-style adventure game dimension, you have to interact with the game via the modern point-and-click controls. But, more about the gameplay later. 

First, let’s talk about our Russian(?) host. Your game program friend is fully voice acted. The voice work has been done by Pascal Cammisotto, who is actually the French developer of this game. While the game is translated in various other languages, the voice acting is stays in English, and it’s glorious. The voice acting in this game is extremely well done and adds even more charm to the game, which may or may not be there.

The pacing of this story is walking on the fine line of going a tad bit too fast and just fast enough. I felt that some sections of this “fictional” game that I have played so far went over a bit too quickly, but I also think that if they dragged on for a bit longer they might overstay their welcome. In other words, in most places the pacing hits the right beats but in some cases, I found that a section was over a bit too fast.

“User, please solve that.”

So, in this game you have to interact with the world in various unique ways via your usual point-and-click style gameplay. You find various items that can aid you on your quest. Your inventory is at the bottom of the screen, and you can place it in the order you like. If two objects might be able to interact, they get a white outline around them. 

Not that this information matters, since I’m not talking about a game that’s here on Switch, but I felt that this game controls better when being played on the touch screen of your Switch compared to the docked controls. I’m not saying that the controls while docked don’t work, but you need to quickly interact with some actions, and I was able to solve most of the puzzles more easy using the touch controls. 

The controls were quite easy to get a hang of. It didn’t take long before I was able to tackle the amazing puzzles in this game. The difficulty balance in this game gets a thumbs up from me. I really loved to solve the puzzles in this game and the mechanics and gags used to solve the puzzles in this game make the game being a love letter to our hobby even better. 

Also, when you are stuck in a certain section, the hint system gets a chef’s kiss. A ten out of ten. Whenever you click the “Help” button, you can unlock a hint. In most cases, you have to unlock another hint before you can unlock the solution. The only penalty you get from using the hint system is a small “boo” shout that the game gives you. But, I highly advise you to not use the hint system. The solution and out-of-the-box thinking you have to do is so much more enjoyable when you solve it without a hint. It’s a shame, since the hint system is one of the best I have seen in point-and-click games so far. 

The biggest shame of this game is that this game is extremely short. This game can be beaten in 5 to 8 hours. So, I currently played this game for 3 hours, so that means I’m somewhat over half way to beat this game. I always feel quite conflicted about these short games. At one hand, some of these are a blast to play through and provide a lot of unique experiences but on the other hand… I always wanted from the game. 

Nostalgic

I think we are currently in the time period where people who grew up with the same sort of games then I did are currently in the indie game development scene. The various game spoofs that this game visits feel so extremely nostalgic all the while that this game is putting its own unique spin on them. For example, the Zelda-style spoof reminds me so much of playing the Minish Cap for the first time. And the first spoof reminds me so much of playing old school point-and-click games from Humongous Entertainment or LucasArts.

The game’s visual presentation pulls you in so much that it makes the game more addictive to play for me. It blends the visual style of its own and the games it’s spoofing so well I have a hard time telling which is which sometimes. I can only praise the artist who works on the visual presentation and the animations since you did an amazing job. 

And as usual, after talking about the visual presentation… I talk about the music and sound effects. And just like the visual presentation, I have no complaints about those either. It’s an amazing blend between modern and retro styled sound effects. I could be an annoying nitpicker and say that it’s an extremely minor shame that the whole soundtrack of this game is orchestrated but then again, that’s extremely impressive for such a small indie game that only costs $13.

So far, I have been praising this game to the moon and back. It’s almost that this game doesn’t have any negatives apart from its short length. The save system works fine, the UI is excellent… I feel that this game is polished and play tested quite a lot before it got released.   

The biggest negative I can say is that this game has some jokes that might go unnoticed or fall flat for younger gamers or people who just get into gaming. I honestly don’t think that the story is going to be so strong if you played it with people who aren’t that into video games. But, if you are well versed into games, I think that this game’s humor and charm will draw you in like it did with me.

Now, this game falls into the trap of being a short point-and-click game. If you want to enjoy this game to its full potential, I highly recommend that you read as little about the game as possible since the fewer you know about the game the better. Otherwise, the charm and humor will hit less hard and that’s a lot of what makes this game so addictive and fun to play. 

The second trap of the point-and-click genre is that the replay value is extremely low. While you might enjoy your 2nd or 3rd playthrough, you will know most of the gags and story beats in this game which makes a 2nd playthrough way less enjoyable. Unless you are doing a speedrun of this game of course. 

So, I think I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. It’s high time for the conclusion I sort of already gave earlier in this article. If you are into video games and enjoy a point-and-click adventure game, I think that this short game is one you shouldn’t sleep on. While the game works a lot better with touch controls compared to controlling it with the joy cons or a pro controller, I don’t think that it would hinder your experience too much in this game. 

Now, if you aren’t into video games, I would still recommend this game to you, but I have to warn you that a lot of the gags and spoofs in this game will go over your head. The strength of the story only shines when you know a little about computers and games. Then the beautiful game world and the nice audiovisual design will draw you in just like it does it with me. 

If I have to describe my feelings and thoughts about this game in a short paragraph I have to say that this game is a humorous point-and-click adventure that takes you through a nostalgic trip throughout (recent) gaming history that uses it’s gags extremely well. The charm of the story, settings, visual and audiovisual presentation quite well to deliver a short but extremely enjoyable adventure that makes me keep an eye on the developer of this game about what he is going to do next.

So, it’s high time to wrap up this article so I can start finishing this game. I want to thank you a lot 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. Oh, so there was a game there… Should I start reviewing it?