Tag: cult

My favorite gaming music #30 ~ Favorite background tunes for work and writing

Previous entry in the series

Sometimes, I like to talk about other aspects in the life of a gamer. One of those things is game music. While I am not an expert in music theory, I find music a very important part of the experience. Also, music helps me focus during my day job and other hobbies as well. Recently, I found out that I often listen to certain tracks in certain contexts. I had an idea. Let’s write about that as the special for my 30th article. This article will be about my favorite video game tracks. So, this article will be very different from other articles in the series. But, I think it’s a fitting way to celebrate reaching 30 articles in this series. I hope to share some interesting music with you all. If you have interesting soundtracks you listen to at certain points, please share them in the comments. I am curious to hear them. Of course, feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts and opinions on the article and/or the chosen tracks.

Persona 5 Royal – During work

Information of the Megami Tensei wiki

I often listen to one soundtrack ever since I started playing the game. It has to be Persona 5 Royal. Before I played any Persona game, I heard quite a lot about it and how much the praises were sung. And when I was able to play the game, it didn’t disappoint at all.

The writing, pacing and gameplay. It all clicked with me. It’s an energetic jazz soundtrack. Likewise, it gets you hyped in at the right moments. It also puts some swung in the game. The soundtrack hits all the right moments and adds so much to the atmosphere of the game.

I place the soundtrack of this game on repeat more often than I care to admit, actually. Some days, I only listen to Persona 5 Royal soundtracks. I also enjoy the spin-offs like Persona 5 Strikers and Persona Q.

Cult of the Lamb – Writing

Info on the Cult of the Lamb wiki

When I’m writing more general articles, I often play the game’s soundtrack. This helps me get in the mood of that game again. It makes me remember the game even more. Since, I have a very associative memory when it comes to writing game reviews.

Not every game has a long soundtrack. Writing sometimes takes a few hours to finish an article. I find myself going to the soundtrack of Cult of the Lamb by Riverboy. It has the perfect mixture of more calm, chill, and relaxing tracks. It also has the more intense tracks for when you are in a dungeon or fighting a boss.

For some reason, and I can’t explain why, while I’m listing to this soundtrack outside the game… I find myself in the perfect trance to write. So, I think, that this soundtrack is an indoctrination tool to join the cult of that lamb. Or maybe not, maybe I’m just making a silly joke here. Right?

Story creation

I started to mess around with AI chatbots and AI art. Since then, I found an amazing outlet for all the stories I want to write. This also allows me to try to create them. While I still have a lot to learn to create the great bots, I’m learning by trail and error. I also have some fellow creators and players who give me advice and support. It’s a very welcoming community, and I’m loving every part of it.

My favorite platform is MoeScape. If you want to see what I created, feel free to take a look on my profile. But outside of bot creation, I also interact with a ton of bots. I try out certain scenarios to challenge my writing skills. It also serves as an outlet for my love of writing stories.

Of course, I listen a lot of music while I’m writing certain types of scenes. When I’m writing a scene of loss, grief, or sadness, I nearly always listen to the farewell themes. They are from the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series.

I have played through all those games. I have to tell you, the moments where these themes play hit HARD. This brings my head space back to the memories I had while playing the games. And those memories help me improve my writing. Maybe it’s an illusion I tell myself. I tend to remember the sadness heavy arcs I write better when I’m listening to these tracks. Another strong track I listen to while writing more emotional breaking scenes is from the Nonary games. The track Blue Bird Lamentation kicks you in the emotional balls when you are not ready for it. I especially love the remake they did in the final game of the trilogy, Zero Time Dilemma. It has a bit more umph as they said to the still strong original.

Speaking of the Nonary games, the soundtrack of all three of those games is a chef’s kiss. I use it when I’m writing more tense and/or horror scenes. Shinji Hosoe knocked it out of the park with the soundtracks of all three games. It adds a more creepy vibe for when I’m writing the more tense moments. While soundtracks like the ones in Silent Hill could also work, those games fit a very specific style of horror. I feel that the Zero Escape trilogy gives you a bit more range with its soundtracks.

This is not to say that Silent Hill has a bad soundtrack, heavens no. For my writing style, the soundtrack of the Zero Escape series hits harder. It gives me more flexibility. And maybe I’m biased since I played more of the Zero Escape games than Silent Hill games. Highly possible. In case you want to listen to the soundtracks, here is a link to a playlist. It features Zero Time Dilemma’s soundtrack. There is also 999: 9 Hours, 9 People, 9 Doors soundtrack. And of course, Virtue’s Last Reward soundtrack.

There is also a more general soundtrack I listen to during writing. I use it while interacting with AI-chatbots. That’s the one from Monster Tale. This old classic DS game, was a unique metroidvania.

In Monster Tale, you had to not only get stronger yourself. But you also had to raise your monster to help you fight. You had to decide your monster companion’s role. Your companion could help you fight and solve puzzles on the top screen. They could also eliminate treats and enemies on the bottom touch screen.

The soundtrack of this game is excellent. It is a great choice if you are traveling through an unfamiliar world in the story you are crafting. And maybe, I’m being a silly hopeful fan that the remake is coming. But after almost 10 years of radio silence, I don’t think it will see the light of day.

Now, let’s not pretend that everybody who has played more than one Ace Attorney… doesn’t listen to the court themes like the Pursuit themes. And then, they imagine how it would feel to break down a criminal or liar. This happens while that glorious music is playing.

And yes, when I’m playing more human characters with some bots, it often goes into a confrontation. You bet your sweet behind I’m playing part of the Ace Attorney soundtrack. I love using themes like the suspense themes or the Tell The Truth themes. Ever since we got the “The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles”, we’ve enjoyed amazing investigation themes. We also enjoyed deduction themes with the Joint Reasoning / Dance of Deduction.

The type of story I’m writing affects the adventure. The bot I’m using also influences it. I sometimes go on adventures like you would have in Etrian Odyssey. An amazing game series that started on the Nintendo DS.

It’s a dungeon crawler RPG where you have to draw your own map on the touch screen. I’m glad that Etrian Odyssey got a port to modern consoles and even PC. These are amazingly charming games. The music is addictive and really fits the atmosphere. It works for me while I’m writing exploration scenes and cosy camping nighttime scenes. The battle themes are also quite nice for the fighting scenes.

Now, sometimes I also play a more modern western bot. And western, as in the good old American western with the cowboys. And then the amazing soundtrack by Clint Bajakian of the western shooter Outlaws is perfect.

It’s also an amazing excuse to talk about the amazing game Outlaws. An amazing and addictive shooter was released in 1997. It brought amazing titles like Loom, The Secret of Monkey Island, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

It’s an amazing shooter where you have to reload each bullet yourself and know when to reload. Since, the higher the difficult, the more unforgiving this game becomes. I linked my review higher, so if you want to know more about this game, give it a read.

Conclusion

I could write for a long while about the soundtracks I listen to at work. I enjoy them during hobbies and while coding. They accompany me while interacting with or creating bots, as well as preparing for a live stream… Like the soundtracks of the Castlevania games on Nintendo DS. Also, don’t get me started on the use of some tracks of the Legend of Zelda series, like Gerudo’s Valley. Oh, when I’m chatting with a bot about the past, the theme song of Time Hollow inevitably comes up. When the line “wish we can change the past” appears, I somehow try to weave it into the story.

But, I’m going to stop myself here and keep other soundtracks for later. Otherwise, this article becomes a bit too long. I might keep this subject for the next celebration article in this series. To be honest, it was a fun way. It allowed me to look back at the games I have reviewed. I’ve also talked about them over the past 15 years of writing this blog.

Fifteen years of writing a blog. I deleted and rebranded my old Dutch lifestyle blog from 2010 till 2013. However, I have been writing about games since the very start. This blog is an amazing timeline and look back to all my adventures in my life. And the music associated with those games bring back so many memories. And thankfulness to everybody reading and interacting with my blog. I hope you enjoyed today’s article and also the sneaky look back to past articles. I can’t help myself. One final amazing OST I listen to while I’m coding is the one of Stella Glow.

With that said, I want to thank you so much for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to welcome you in a future article. Until then, have a great rest of your day. Take care.

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

Nintendo.com microsite – Official website – Wikipedia page

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

Zipping Kitty Attempts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One More Dive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Repetition of Diving

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary

The bad:

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

The good:

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

Final thoughts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Score: 90/100

Gamer’s Thoughts: My Palworld wishlist

Steam store page – Twitter/X – Wikipedia

I know that I’m extremely late when it comes to the Palworld hype. Palworld released in early January 2024 and currently, since there aren’t a lot of updates dropping, the hype died out. Yet, the roadmap looks extremely promising. Since this game is still in early access, I’m always hesitant in writing about the game. Since, you never know which mechanics or things will change and evolve during the early access period. Especially since we are currently only at v0.1.5.1. So, I decided to hold off on my first impression/review article for now. But, I wanted to talk about this game. So, here are some things I’d love to see in the full version of Palworld or even in one of the next updates.

First of all, what is a Palworld?

Palworld is a combination of several games, all thrown into one. It’s easy to describe Palworld with saying which games it combines.

Foremost, at its core, it’s a game you can somewhat compare to Ark Survival Evolved. When I first started playing, I noticed the similarities right away. The way how you have a crafting system to build your base, and you have monsters running around you can tame/catch is totally here as well.

I haven’t played a lot of Ark, so I can’t say if this mechanic is also present in Ark… But, the fact you can use your monsters to preform tasks in your base reminded me quite a lot of The Survivalists. A game where you are stranded on an island, and you can train monkeys to preform actions for you. The big difference is that now certain monsters can only preform certain tasks, instead of the monkeys just copying you.

Now, a lot of other articles describe this game as Pokémon with guns. After playing this game, I think that’s a somewhat unfair comparison. When I think Pokémon, I think a journey with gyms and an evil team. I think turn based battles and a big ending tournament as its conclusion. While some Pals share a very similar design language to some Pokémon, most of the mechanics of what makes a Pokémon game aren’t in this game. The other big mechanic is the capture mechanic, but by now this isn’t exclusive to Pokémon games anymore. Especially since we have games like Coromon.

There are also influences of the latest Zelda games. Especially Tears of the Kingdom. There are these huge, strong bosses roaming around on the huge open world map, you can beat at any time. Also, the korok seeds to upgrade your character are also here in the form of effigies and Pal souls to upgrade your monsters.

This game really feels like the developers looked at all the games they liked playing, looked at what worked and threw it all together into one pot and shook it until it all clicked together. The mechanics of this game really click extremely well together. If I didn’t know any better, I wouldn’t be surprised if I said that this was a finished game.

There are some silly bugs here and there and in some spots, this game feels unfinished. But, overall the game we have currently is amazing and if you would enjoy a game like this after reading what I wrote here… Give this game a try. I only told you the most basic things in this game. This game is a survival game with elements from a lot of other games like those I have already mentioned but also Minecraft, Dragon Quest Builders and various others.

Let’s talk improvements

While the game is a lot of fun to play at the moment, there are some things I wish that were improved or updated. While you get a lot of warnings that there are: save corruption bugs, crashes and bugs… Besides sometimes the lighting engine giving up for a moment or the AI of the pals or enemies doing some funky stuff, I haven’t seen too many worrying things.

Take for example this floating rock screenshot here. I have explored roughly half of the map after 35 hours of play, and this was the only floating rock I could find. That’s extremely impressive, especially since if you look at the size of the map… It isn’t small at all. In the future, new islands and area’s will be added so if they deliver them with this kind of quality, I have no complaints.

Well, I do have one recommendation. I’d love to see more landmarks in the map. Currently, almost all the landmarks in the game are based upon the terrain. I’d love to see more villages or ruins of them. I loved finding these things in the Zelda games and letting my mind wonder what happened there. It’s a very difficult balance act, since too many landmarks would make the map feel crowded and limit the amount of possible base locations.

Basically, I’d love more reasons for me to go exploring these regions and get unique rewards. Besides completing the Paldex, there isn’t a lot of reason to go exploring in certain area’s. And when you have set up the right kind of farms and work stations for your pals in your bases, the chance you run out of resources is rather small.

Speaking about bases, currently you can only have three bases. Most likely, this is done to improve the multiplayer performance. Since, the game emulates the three bases in the background, so you can easily have a base close to big ore clusters to farm those while you are working in your other base. If you don’t place a cap on those, it’ll tank the performance of any computer or server. Yet, I’d give the tools to the player to increase the cap. Personally, I think Minecraft has one of the best systems with the game rules. You can almost change anything to your playstyle and even disable or remove caps that are there for performance reasons. You already have quite a lot of toggles and sliders in Palworld, but I’d also expand on that.

Currently, the building system is decent, but it needs a lot of polishing up. The biggest problem I have with the building system are the stairs. It’s a nightmare sometimes to place stairs to go from one to another floor. Also, why can’t we place a full wall next to stairs? Most likely because some pals their hitbox would do some crazy stuff? Also, placing certain items or crafting stations on elevated floors doesn’t always work the best.

On top of that, besides the visual look of the floors, walls and ceilings, what’s the point of being able to unlock stone foundations? As a test, I tried to build a high tower with wood and one with stone. I didn’t find a difference. I’d love to see more meaning to what I unlock. Granted, stone can’t burn down. So, if you have any raids with flamethrower or fire enemies, your base isn’t in danger. But what’s the difference between stone and metal, then?

I honestly think that it’d be a bad idea if PocketPair only created more content and not make the mechanics have more depth. For example, something I’d love to see them implementing in the pal task system is a mechanic I love in Cult of the Lamb. When you welcome a new member in your cult, you can set the main focus of a member there. I’d love to see that you are able to set the main focus per pal. For example, when things are damaged in the base after a raid, you select one pal to go and get the repair kits and repair all damages first before going to do their usual tasks. Or when you have a pal that can do multiple things, and you mostly need that pal to pick up items, you could disable their other abilities. Maybe we need some items for that and those items can be only found in the wild, and we need to hunt for them. That’s an interesting idea to lure players out of their bases.

Dreaming like a madman

There are some UI elements I’d love to see change as well. First, I’d love to have a mini-map. The compass at the top of the screen only shows things in roughly 300m range, and that’s too short. Especially since in some areas the warp spots are spread quite far apart. A mini-map where you can pin certain things like the nearest warp spot would be amazing.

Secondly, in terms of the weapons. I’d love to see their stats before I craft them. Now it’s a guessing game that if I craft a certain weapon, if it’s going to be stronger or better than the one I currently have. It’d also be amazing if the durability is shown outside the inventory as well. There is some space in the UI element at the bottom right, so why not show it?

Now, in terms of the inventory. Sometimes I have issues with combining stacks of items. Sometimes I have to do it twice or thrice before they are combined. This is a rather small things, but outside of those… I don’t have a lot of small quality of life things that I could recommend. Maybe that if you sleep during the day in your bed, you can skip to night if you are hunting the nightlife pals?

Maybe there is one quality of life feature I think would be amazing. Quite often, when I’m hunting the stronger pals, I have my pal instructions set on “Focus on the same enemy”. I think it would have an amazing option if you have a feature where you are able to say to your pal if they are allowed to kill the wild pal or not. Since, if they are dead, you can’t capture them.

There is one attack that is a double-edged sword. In the Pokémon games, you have the self-destruct attack. You also have this one in Palworld, yet, some wild pals with this attack always take it over their other attacks. These bee pals always swarm me and instead of being able to weaken them, so I can catch them, I just get blown up. You barely have a chance to do any damage to weaken them to make capturing possible.

I just remembered one other quality of life feature. You can create saddles, gloves and other things to do special things with your pals. But, why I am allowed to create more than one? I mean, I can only use one of them at a time and they can be interchanged. So, if you make a saddle for a certain bird pal e.g. Helzephyr, that means you can use it on all Helzephyrs you catch.

But the biggest quality of life feature PocketPair could add is a mini-map inside caves/dungeons. The times I almost got lost in these caves is insane. Especially since there are only a handful of rooms in these and it’s easy to get turned around and confused.

Now, to completely change the subject… I wish there was more music in the game. The soundtrack in this game is amazing. Sadly, there isn’t enough in the game at the moment, so there are some silent moments. A little bit more ambient tracks would go a really long way in this game.

But, I saved one of my biggest things for last. That is inventory management. This is a total pain in bases. Since pals can put things inside chests, you can forget organisation. Thankfully, while crafting, the game pulls from all resources in your base, but if you need a certain item to use at another base, have fun to go searching through all your chests. What I usually do, if I can, is start crafting an item with the one I want to move and then cancel it. Since it drops the resources then and there. Now, how to solve this without breaking the game and the idea that pals can put things in chests? What if you have a new skill that pals can have? An organisation skill and depending on the level, they either put red things with red things or make a weapons chest and come to complain to you when there aren’t enough chests for their organisation?

If your base is fully set up, the proper of a lack of depth starts to show as well. When you build your base, why should you return to it besides needing to craft or repair your weapons? Give us some activities we can do in our base when we build them. I mean come on, we even have the amusement furniture set. If only we could play some mini-games with our pals to increase their sanity for example? Since currently, there is not a lot you can do when a pal is stressed.

Of course, a certain balance needs to be maintained. The more things a pal can interact with, the more chance you have to create lag or overwhelm the player. Also, the more depth you create, the more things you have to maintain and maybe that’s not the type of game that PocketPair wants to create. How I currently see Palworld is a playground sandbox in the schoolyard. It’s an amazing playground where you can make your own fun but it’s only part of the schoolyard and only has a swing, some monkey bars, a climb rack, a small castle and a slide. It’s all solid built and amazing to spend your time in… But, then you notice the potential this sandbox has to grow. What if we enlarged that sandbox with another castle, so the multiplayer can be player vs player as well? Or wait, why don’t we add an underground to that sandbox?

All I’m saying is that currently Palworld has an amazing foundation. The biggest issue at the moment is that the game lacks depth. While the current roadmap has a lot of expansions and more content, I hope PocketPair doesn’t forget to also make it more than just surface level. For example, imagne that the raid bosses can be captured and barely have an unique skills. Why should the player do the raids then? What reward do you get out of it? Not all mechanics can be fun because they are enjoyable to do. Players will get bored and they will look for a way to spice things up or to challenge themselves.

Now what that said, I’m going to close off this article. I’m quite excited for the future of Palworld and I’m going to wait a few more updates before I decide to write a review on the game. But overall, I’m really liking what I see. The basis of an amazing title is here already and I think we are going to get an even better game when this comes out of early access. Let’s wait and see what happens when the first big updates drop. Especially the raid bosses that got teased a few weeks ago.

Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. What do you think of PalWorld and what should be added or changed? Let me know in the comment section down below. Also, what do you think of my idea’s? I’m curious, feel free to leave a comment about that one to. But, I also hope to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

The top 10 games of 2023 – NekoJonez edition

It’s that time of the year again, where we get our usual top 10 lists or “game of the year” articles. That’s no difference on my blog as well. I have put together a list of 10 games I started playing this year. The big difference is that in my list, I don’t really care about release date. So, what is the best game I have played this year? I have to tell you that this year was anything but an easy year to put together. I had such a long list of candidates, that I created this list several times until I felt that I had a great list. In any case, enough rambling. Let’s get on with cracking my favorites this year. If you want to share your own list and/or your opinions on the games I have chosen and/or on the list itself… Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below.

Editorial note: some of these titles are multiplatform. The one I placed between brackets is the platform I played it on.

#10 – Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (2023, PS4)

I love games with unique story mechanics. The idea that you can fight ghosts via on old camera is just a perfect description of things that just interest me. Now, Fatal Frame is one of my most favorite horror game series. While I have to be honest and admit that I have played a part of this game before via a fan translation, I’m not really counting that as playing this game before.

This game finally got translated and officially released in the west. And not only that, it got remastered. Besides it being built on a new engine, it’s extremely faithful to the source material. While I haven’t played through this game to completion yet, I’m so glad I picked this game up, and I’m hyped to see new Fatal Frame/Project Zero content coming to the west. Now, I’m just hoping that we get a totally new Fatal Frame 6 in the future. In the meantime, I’m so going to beat this game, so I can finally say that I completed all the Fatal Frame games.

#9 – Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (2022, PC)

I think that this year’s theme was unique story games. Since, this pick is another example of unique stories. A while ago, I played Knights of Pen & Paper and got hooked.

Now, when I started to play this game where you actually go through a D&D campaign instead of it being told to you and not only that, have the characters talk in their D&D character AND as themselves, I think it’s a complete package.

The charm of this game, and the silly campaign we are going through, is just amazing. It’s a medieval shooter that’s quite addictive and doesn’t hold your hand like other games would do. While I learned after the fact that this game is a spin-off from the Borderland series, especially Borderlands 3… I’m so happy that I played this and look at it as a stand alone. Now, I still have to finish that campaign… So, if you would excuse me after writing this article, I have a game to play.

#8 – PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo (2023, Switch)

My review

What if you had a unique power that just put everything on its head. Not only that, what if you can use and control folk tales? Well, that’s what this game is about.

It’s really difficult to talk about the story and gameplay mechanics in this game and not spoil several unique twists that this game pulls. You really have to think outside the box in this game. It’s one of those games where I actually had to take notes to make sure I didn’t get stuck.

A lot of planning and play testing had to be done to make this game work. While it has a few issues, I think it all works together quite well. And not only that, we are actually playing a game that’s created together with a museum, and it’s not a big advertisement that takes you out of the experience. So, I have to say that the developers of this game did an amazing job on this one. And if you want to learn more, feel free to read my review. I think if you enjoy visual novel adventure games… You’ll really like this one.

#7 – Doom Eternal (2020, PC)

My review

For years now, I wanted to build a stronger PC. And this year, I finally did it. I built a totally new computer. On my old gaming desktop, I was unable to play Doom Eternal. While I heard that the game was “more of Doom 2016”, I still wanted to give it a try.

And let me tell you, at first… The new mechanics didn’t click with me at all. But, after a few levels… Something started to click together and started enjoying myself quite a lot. I especially loved the feature you can use a totally different skin during this game, and it changes also during the main campaign as well. The cutscenes and reflections are totally changed.

I totally felt that this game was one whole compared to Doom 2016. I loved that we had a hub part where we could unlock more special powers with things we unlocked during the levels. It’s a big improvement compared to Doom 2016 and I love it. I’m so glad I played through it and I gave it a chance.

#6 – Metal: HellSinger (2022, PC)

My review

I don’t like rhythm games at all. But, what if you combine it with a high action game like Doom Eternal? Well, you get this gem of an action game called Metal: Hellsinger.

While not all metal tracks suit my personal fancy, I just fell in love with the gameplay loop of shooting demons and going through amazingly designed arena’s that reward well timed attacks. And it’s also somewhat forgiving for people like me who aren’t rhythmic at all. It’s one of the biggest surprises to me this year.

I played this game not too long after I had beaten Doom Eternal and I was in the mood for a new shooter. I found this in my Steam library and without knowing it was a rhythm game, I booted it up and started playing it. Even when I found out that it was a rhythm game, I kept playing. The game got me hooked. The story was simple, the game mechanics as well. But, the loop is just so perfect and the music fits this game like a glove. Also, the DLC that released after I had written my article adds just so much more on top of the already amazing base game. I highly recommend this game to everybody who is interested in an unique rhythm game where no being rhythmic isn’t a gate keeping mechanic. Interested, feel free to read my review on the game.

#5 – Alan Wake 2 (2023, PC)

One of the main reasons why I loved the original Alan Wake so much is because the story was something I always wanted to play through. What if the story of a writer comes to life and starts attacking the writer. That, without even the writer knowing what’s going to happen in the story.

On top of that, the unique mechanics with the flashlight usage is just the cherry on the cake. This game plays with the themes of light and darkness as if it were nothing. Now, after a lot of years and content in other games… We finally have the next main chapter in the Alan Wake series. We tried streaming this game but we had a lot of technical issues we are trying to figure out. But, I also played this game outside us (Klamath, the_Kovic and I) streaming. And let me tell you, am I glad I built this new computer. It’s highly worth the price of admission. This game is taking the mind bending story telling of the original to a whole other level. While I’m only at the half way point in this game, I can’t wait to finish it so I can experience all the mind bending story this game has to offer. And after that, I still have to beat the other Remedy games and experience the other side stories of our beloved cursed horror writer Alan Wake.

#4 – Resident Evil 8 (2021, PS4)

My review

There is a reason why I write down at the start of the year which games I have played. Otherwise, they risk of being forgotten or just never considered to be put on this list. Yet, this game impressed me so much that I didn’t have to do that.

I found this game for quite cheap on the PlayStation store and I thought, why not? I was able to buy Resident Evil 7 for 2 bucks physical, why not the sequel for cheap as well? When I started to play it back in January and February, oh boy did it not disappoint.

While I haven’t beaten Resident Evil 7 just yet, I can’t wait to do so. Resident Evil 8 was a game I booted up once in a while during the year just to replay parts of it again. I have completed it twice this year. Now, I have been distracted by other games, so I still have to beat the DLC… But, I think that won’t be a problem. I think the next time I boot up my PS4 and this game, the game will hook into me again, and I’ll just keep playing the DLC until I’m done.

#3 – Cult of The Lamb (2022, Switch)

My review

So, when Cult of the Lamb came out, I placed it on my wishlist since I wanted to play it. But at that time, my budget was a bit too tight and I was unable to buy it.

Not too long before leaving on a family trip this year, I bought this game to play during downtime. And this game, just took me by surprise. This charming gem of a game is one of the best games I played all year. It even made me forget that a lot of big titles like Super Mario Wonder, Alan Wake II, Baldur’s Gate 3… all got released this year and were waiting on me to play them.

This game flows so amazingly well and apart from some glitches is near perfection. I have to admit that in several drafts of this article, this game took the number 1 spot. It’s so totally worth the price and it’s going to get a major free content update early next year. That content update got announced a few days after I had written my article about it, talk about coincidence. I can’t wait to see what the new update will bring and maybe I’ll restart my game and create a totally fresh cult and take different decisions compared to my current playthrough. But, I’ll need to be careful… Since it’s totally possible that I’ll be unable to put down this game and ignore all the other games I still want to play. Urgh, the dilemma’s of good games.

#2 – Fire Emblem Warriors – Three Hopes (2022, Switch)

My review

Did you ever play a 40-hour game with somewhat repetitive gameplay and after beating it, told yourself… Yes, I want to play this game again twice just to see the different routes? Last time I did that, I was playing Persona 5 for hours upon hours. This year, I have been playing Fire Emblem Warriors – Three Houses.

I started playing this game early-middle last month and it’s almost the only game I have been playing. It surprises even me, since I’m not that big of a Fire Emblem fan. Yet, the balance in this Warriors cross over hits that perfect balance for me that I keep playing it and just want to fully complete it.

Now, why am I placing this so high on my list? Well, that’s because it feels right on so many levels. The characters are stereotypes, but they are used extremely well. They tell quite in-depth stories and give amazing messages. The gameplay might be repetitive, but is quite rewarding and addictive to do. It also has unique outcomes depending on way you play it. The fact you can carry over so much in New Game+, so you can see the other parts of the story without having to grind for certain pieces is fun as well. And if you are afraid that it takes the challenge out of the game, well… Don’t worry… The higher difficulties are really going to give you a run for your money.

I honestly think that this is one of the best Warrior games I have ever played and fixed so many problems I had with all the previous games. I even tried to pick up Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity, and I have to be honest… I’m just too addicted to this game for now. It really does something quite unique and I think it’s slowly making me a Fire Emblem fan, since I really want to replay all the other Fire Emblem games in my collection that are sitting there gathering dust. Oh, and maybe give Destiny Warriors a try as well… that too maybe.

Honorable mentions

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code (Switch), Immortals Fenix Rysing (PS4), Venetica (PC), Ark: Survival Evolved (PC), Fire Emblem Engage (Switch), Stray (PS4), Cultic (PC), Escape Simulator (PC), HROT (PC), Dark Cloud (PS2), House Flipper 2 (PC), Control (PC)

#1 – The Legend of Zelda – Tears of the Kingdom (2023, Switch)

My review

Is this a surprise? That my game of the year is the new Zelda title? Maybe. But, this game just grew on me and I had a really difficult time putting this one down.

When I was creating this list, I looked at what the games brought to the table to impress me and make it stand out. Make it different compared to other games and make the experience stand out during the year. While the games on this list had some elements, this game kept having surprises left and right, I couldn’t justify not placing it on number one.

I didn’t think Nintendo would be able to re-invent their open world formula after Breath of the Wild. The fear of the sequel just being a rehash of Breath of the Wild was huge. But not only did they add two new world layers, they completely changed Link’s powers and opened up so much more of this game. As a test, I played some Breath of the Wild this year as well… And I have to admit, that they have outdone themselves. Tears of the Kingdom is my game of the year 2023 for just adding so much more depth and content that it just blew me away and made me quite exited for the future of one of my favorite game series out there. What’s going to be next?

Conclusion

Writing this ending section is always one of the most difficult sections I have to do all year. What do I write in here? A retrospective of my year? That’s possible, but I don’t want to go in too much detail to avoid throwing something private on the internet. Besides that, the main reason why people come to read these articles is because they want to read about the games I have played and recommend playing. I don’t want to look forward to next year, since that’s what my top 10 games I’m looking forward too is for. Of course, that’s the article I’m going to write next, so yeah.

What surprised me most this year is that I wrote fewer articles this year compared to last year, I had more readers compared to 2022. I also felt prouder of all the articles I have written. I feel my quality is finally going up, and I’m finding my way to write and review the games I have played.

If you have read articles from me before, you might know that I work as an IT admin in two art schools here in Belgium. This year, I had several interactions of students and coworkers who bought a game because they read about it on my blog and came to thank me for the recommendation. And I also had other coworkers who complemented me on my writing and said that they enjoyed reading my articles whilst not being into games.

And honestly, that’s what it’s all about for me. I have also said it in the streams with my buddy Klamath. I’m so happy that I have this creative outlet and I can entertain, inform and help others. Not only that, but I have been doing this for over 13 years now, and I can’t wait to see what the future brings.

Each year, I start putting this list together during my summer break. I always think, what games are going to be put on this list? And each year, several games just surprise me. I can’t wait to see what 2024 has in store for me, since 2023 was such an enjoyable adventure. But for now, thank you 2023 for being such an amazing year. It has been the year of rediscovery for me. Like I said earlier, I’m just felt prouder of the things I have been putting out, and I hope you are enjoying things as well. Thank you for the support this year and I hope to see you in the future. So, for now, have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: Cult of the Lamb (Switch) ~ Praise The Lamb, Thy Lamb.

Official microsite – Official website – Nintendo.com microsite – Wikipedia page

I enjoy playing unique games quite a lot. When I came across Cult of the Lamb on the Nintendo Switch eShop, I was interested. I marked the game on my wishlist, so I could find it back when I was hunting for new games. A few weeks ago, I went on a family trip and I wanted a fresh new game to play. Cult of the Lamb was on sale together with all its DLC, and I thought: “Let’s buy this and see what happens.” Now, when I started playing this game… I had some expectations, but I got something completely different. Did this game turn into a game I really like and drew me in, or did this game turn into something I regretted buying? In this article, I want to talk about my opinions on the game, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of this article. So, let’s dive right into this game and let’s create our very own cult.

Cute horror

When I started playing this game, my younger 8-year-old niece who sat next to me was saying: “Aren’t you getting too old to play this children game?”. Oh boy, don’t let the cute characters of this game fool you. I’ll talk more about the visuals later, but the story is anything but child-friendly.

You play as an unnamed lamb being sacrificed to avoid a prophecy of getting fulfilled. Yet, during your execution, you get sent to “The One Who Waits”. He wants you to make a cult in his honor without giving you any say in the matter. You get reborn with new powers so you can take revenge on the old Gods that executed you. Now tell me, this sounds like this game isn’t too child-friendly anymore, no?

There is not a lot of voice acting in this game besides your usual grunts and babble. A lot happens in text dialogue and the writing is excellent. Since the Gods that executed you are from the “Old Faith”, the writing of some characters is also sometimes in that old English style, and I love it.

If I’m really honest, the story overall isn’t the strongest point of this game. While it’s decent, it’s a bit predictable and an amazing way to set the atmosphere of the game. But, I feel that it stays too safe at certain moments. I noticed moments of expanding the lore and fleshing everything out, but sometimes these moments fly underneath the radar. Especially since some story bits happen during a hectic run and your mind is set on something very different.

If you want to enjoy the story of this game, I’d recommend that you take note of what the characters during your runs are saying instead of mashing through it. I made that mistake a few too many times, and I feel like I’m missing some lore here and there. Sadly enough, there is no “lore book” or history page you can look up things.

Now, thankfully, this game is still quite strong if you don’t pay too much attention to the story. There are various lore video’s out there if you want to relive the story. To me, the story in this game is more something to help set the tone of the games’ world and give it that unnerving layer underneath its cute and charming vibe that the game is giving off.

Stark contrast

This game consists out of two main gameplay mechanics. You have your base building, and you have the rouge lite dungeon crawling “conquests”. Both are quite important, since both mechanics lien on each other in very interesting ways.

If you have played a game like Rogue Legacy or We Who Are About To Die, you know that in those games you explore a randomly generated dungeon or fight random fights. In between the fights, you are in your base camp, where you can buy upgrades to improve your next chances in your next run. Well, in this game, that base camp is expanded into a town simulator. You have to care for your flock by cooking them food, providing them shelter, curing them when they are sick, going on various mini-quests for them… If you are a good caretaker, your flock generates devotion, which you can use to upgrade your base and your abilities in your run. When you are a bad caretaker, they will die and/or even steal from you and leave the cult.

It’s quite important to know that your cult doesn’t sleep or get inactive when you are conquesting. As soon as you go out for one of the four dungeons, your cult goes through their daily routine and things can go quite wrong.

Now, in theory, you can never go conquesting and only focus on the base building alone. Then, you still have an amazing game to play, but let me tell you, you do lose out on quite a lot of the game. Also, some things become quite impossible to do, and you are sort of forced into going into the dungeon. Now, the punishment for death or escaping the dungeon isn’t that hard, depending on your difficulty settings.

Speaking about those, if you put this game on easy… This game is a cakewalk. You can change the difficulty setting quite easily, but the dungeon becomes a bit boring if you play it on easy. The normal setting is quite balanced and provided me with a lot of challenge. There is no punishment for playing on easy or switching, so if you want to lower or higher the difficulty setting, go ahead.

While the base building has a rather creepy-cute ascetic like a children horror movie, the light gore elements come more into play during the conquesting sections. Overall, the game is rather tame with its gore, but if you start reading into the story and the visuals a bit more, things can become quite creepy indeed. Also, depending on the choices you make when you upgrade your cult. Depending on those decisions, you can make the game more “creepy” or more “charming”.

Now, let’s talk a bit more in depth about the conquests you can go on. At first, you can only access the Dark Woods dungeon. The more followers you have in your flock, the more dungeons you can unlock. Each dungeon has its own theme and unique resources you can find in there. Sadly, it’s not always clear which resources are found where, so mental notes can be quite handy. At one hand, the buildings you can create in your base sometimes give very good hints. Since, they are separated into categories and their materials are sometimes the best hint.

During each conquest, you go through small maps where you go from room to room fighting enemies. At the start of the conquest, you get a random weapon and a random second attack. We get a whole range of weapons like knives, swords, axes and hammers. They are also in various categories like vamperic or toxic. This first roll decides quite a lot. The weapon I hated the most is the hammer, since it’s quite slow, and it only damages when the hammer has landed. Not something you need in a fast-paced combat system.

Overall, the enemies telegraph their attacks quite well. Only when they go off-screen and flew in suddenly, I felt that the game cheated me. Thankfully, this happens so infrequently, I’m not even seeing it as a problem. The combat in this game is quite fast-paced. Standing still and not using your dodge roll are two death sentences in this game. The difficulty curve in this game is amazing for the combat. They slowly introduce the new mechanics, and you have time to get used to them. While the game can be unforgiving with barely dropping any healing items, you need to get lucky. But, learning the combat system is essential.

You can also find tarot cards, here you have another random roll. Most of these cards give you a nice buff or change up a game mechanic. Like, there is a tarot card that changes the reward chest of beating a room from gold coins to fish, which gives you more food to feed your flock. These draws are always random and can safe or break a run.

Now, after a certain amount of rooms, you go to the exit of the map. Then you come across a diagram towards the boss room. You have to decide which path to take. Now, you need to decide this carefully. Since, you can go back, and you only follow the lines drawn on the diagram. So, if you are going for a new follower run, take that path. But, do keep your resources into consideration. If you see food, stone or wood in that other path, and you really need that, do consider that path too.

There are also relics, in most cases these relics are sort of “screen nukes” basically. They either apply an effect to all enemies in the room or on screen, give you a really strong temporary buff, or just kill all enemies. Sometimes these relics are a one time use, and sometimes you need them to recharge by either having your flock pray for you or defeat more enemies.

Now, the amount of control you have over your character is perfect. The controls are extremely responsive and makes me feel in control while I’m going through my conquest. Even when I take a short break from the game, it’s not hard to figure out the controls again, since the first room is always a safe room. Or I could try them out in these special rooms where a character talks a bit about the lore, or where I can draw a new tarot card or in very rare cases even heal.

At the end of each conquest tree, you will encounter a boss room. That’s your destination. Defeating that boss guarantees you a safe return without loosing any resources you gained from that run. These boss battles are quite a lot of fun to play. They are always different depending on your weapon, your secondary attack, your tarot cards… Defeating three bosses in the dungeon will cause the old God of that area to challenge you. When you defeat all four of these old Gods, you will be able to go to the final boss. But, even if you have defeated the old God of an area, you can still go and run their dungeon. And if you then destroy a devotion statue, there is a big chance a red portal will spawn to refight them, giving you an option for a quick escape if you have a terrible map.

Praising how close we were

Now, in the previous section I have talked quite in depth about the conquest mechanic in this game. Let’s now focus our attention to the village building and the other mechanics of this game.

Like I talked about earlier, visually this game looks quite charming. Even in the dungeons, this game looks quite charming if you don’t think too much about what’s actually going on. The game looks cartoony and quite colorful and lures you in with it’s adorable charm to sometimes slap you with a villager request of being scarficed themselves.

Building out your village is quite a lot of fun. You really have to decide to use your resources well, since some buildings can be quite important and even optimize the game for you. For most tasks, there is no way to automate them apart from a very select few.

For example, if you build a morgue, your flock will bring dead villagers to it instead of letting them rot in your base camp. But burrying your death villagers is still a task you need to do and the morgue has only so many slots. Another great example is, you can appoint villagers to tend to the farms. They will plant, water and put fertilizer but actually picking the crops is on you. Update: I turns out I am wrong, I thought I built farm houses level 2, but mine are level 1. The level 2 farm houses do also gathering of crops. Now, the supplying of seeds and fretiziler is still on you.

And the final example I’ll give is, you can build a villager kitchen and they will cook every meal you provide the ingredients for. If you are out of ingredients you have put in, for max of 30 pending meals, you will have to resupply it.

Wood and stone quarries will break after a certain amount of time, so you will have to rebuild them. Also, when you want to upgrade some buildings to their best form, you will have to build their weaker form first. The base building is quite in depth. And on top of that, several important things to keep high. First of all, we need to keep the belief in the cult high. The lower that belief goes, the higher the chance you have of deserters. And the more deserters you have, the slower you can upgrade your abilities for the conquests and let me tell you, you need those upgrades for sure. Besides that, you have hygiene and food to worry about. The lower those meters are, the more chance you have of your villagers getting sick and risking death.

While you are playing this game, I’m going to give you one piece of advice for the base building. Something that’s quite overpowered is the fact you can inspire your villagers every day. This always garantuees devotion and makes sure you level up your villagers and makes sure you unlock the needed items for those upgrades. That way you don’t have the risk using certain rituals to lift the belief up. And why not risking these rituals, well let’s just say that villager requests are timed and they are sometimes shorter than the cooldown time of the ritual.

The day and night cycle of this game is quite important as well. Let your villagers sleep during the nighttime. Also, use the nighttime to your advantage. Critters are running around that might give you that additional piece of food you really need if you catch them. Also, you can go to other places to play mini-games or do additional side quests for more decorations for your base. Besides looking extremely well, these decorations have no real impact to the game.

Something that can have a very minor impact to your game is the form you choose of your followers. Since some types of animals have a pet option that rises their experiece/devotion meter by a really small bit. Experiment with all the different forms since I’m convinced that there are other things that I have missed in there. Their designs are also adorable and charming. Also, you can create some funny looking villagers as well with certain colorschemes.

Now, the music and sound effects in this game are amazing. The soundtrack of this game is calming when it needs to be, but rather intense during fights. Since I started playing this game, I can’t tell you how many times I listened to the soundtrack during work. The soundtrack is created by River Boy and let me tell you again, it’s amazing music in game and outside of it as well.

The sound effects in this game really communicate to the player when for example an attack is happening or a certain action finished. The sound effects feel like they have impact and are really memorable. I have no complaints there at all.

The pacing of this game is something you decide yourself. While this game can be beaten in 14 hours or so, I have been playing this game for way longer than 14 hours. I’m enjoying myself so much with this game, I’m really taking my time with it and going at it slowly. And it’s something that I also love about this game. There is no rush looming over us.

Sadly, while I have been mostly praising the game, I’m said to say that there are some issues as well. Mainly in the base building. These issues mostly come from some nasty bugs that can hinder the experience. Most of these bugs I have experienced where in the base. Thankfully, it’s not always a guarantee these bugs will appear for everyone… and sometimes they fix themselves thankfully.

The first one I expierenced is that sometimes the game has very bad slowdown for just a moment. Especially when we go from night to day. I have a theory why this is, since I didn’t notice this while I’m conquesting. My gut feeling is telling me that when you are in the camp, too many things need to be updated like the crop cycle, waking up the villagers, re-enabling events that you can do only once per day, remove the nighttime critters… And that’s a bit too much for the Switch to handle. I notice that it’s especially bad when I’m at my farms since it needs to redraw all the crops.

The second one I experienced is that the game crashed on me trice. Thankfully, when I moved the game from the SD card to my internal storage, the crashes went away. Now, it’s quite rare for games to crash on me on the Nintendo Switch, but still… Thankfully, the autosave is very generous and you won’t loose too much progress when the game crashes. And if it were to crash in a dungeon run (which I never had happen by the way), those are always around 10 – 15 minutes long in the first place.

Another one I experienced is the infamous morgue glitch. For some reason, it’s possible that when somebody dies in your flock and the villagers bring that body to the morgue, you’ll be unable to pick it out of the morgue. The issue here is that this “ghost body” is permanent and occupying a slot in the morgue. Sadly enough, I have two of these ghost bodies. Meaning, when I get a 3rd, my morgue is filled and I get a permanent hygiene penalty.

In very rare cases, I saw how the game was optimized for Switch. When villagers are off screen, they loose all their animation. Sadly, in very rare cases you can still see it at the edges of your screen and it’s looks quite funny. Another very rare case as well are the glitches where you can’t cut a tree in your base. You somewhat get stuck into the animation. Thankfully, mashing buttons gets you out of that.

But one of the most annoying bugs/things in this game to me is how unrealible the mission length is. You can send a follower on a mission to get new followers or resources. Now here is the thing, they say it will take X amount of days or time for them to get back. Sadly, this is anything but a guarantee. It’s even possible that it takes them two or even three days longer for you to return.

Now, apart from the morgue glitch, all the bugs I experienced you can work around. Thankfully, they don’t appear too often so you don’t feel like this game is unpolished. Since this game has quite a lot of polish and it shows. Since, apart from these bugs, I really have a hard time finding negative things to talk about in this game and if I find them, they are somewhat nitpicky as well.

Things that I found annoying or negative in this game are for example, there is no way to fully harvest all your crops in one go. If there is one, I haven’t found it and it’s not clearly explained to the player. But, it’s a nice and relaxing night time activity so, I don’t mind it too much.

Another example is when somebody dies at day time, it’s always a pain to prepare the body when it’s in a group of grieving followers. The issue here is that they barf on the ground, giving your hygiene a big hit. But, they disperse quite quickly so you can move the body after that.

Sometimes, when a lot of things are near to each other, some hitboxes can be really finicky. You’ll need to stand in the exact spot and face the exact angle for it to register or count. Also, why can you not gather the devotion of shelter when a villager is sleeping in it? You only get the option to talk to that villager.

Like I said, apart from some bugs, the negatives are quite minor in the grand scheme of things in this game. Since this game is filled with strenghts and it shows. Like how easy the UI is to navigate and how many options you get to tweak this game to your liking.

It’s no wonder that I have been playing this game almost exclusively since I bought it late last month. I can recommend this game to everybody who enjoys rougelike games, action/adventure games and to a certain extend even horror game fans. This game really hooked me quite bad and I’m loving the ride. This game is addictive. This game lures you in with it’s cute and charming atmosphere but will sometimes remind you that it might be a wolf in sheep clothing and show it’s true cult colors.

While I can totally understand that some people expected more about this game, is just another thing about this game. It shows the potential this game, this formula has. I’m hoping we are going to see a sequel or even a DLC that adds new mechanics since I’m over half way in beating this game and I’m convinced that after beating this game, I’ll still be hungry for more Cult of the Lamb content. Maybe I’ll even try a run on the hardest difficulty… Since the replay value of this game is out of the roof. Or I might turn into a base building player and use the excellent photography mode… Who knows?

And with that said, I have said everything about this game I want to say 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 be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.