First Impression: The Legend of Zelda – Echoes of Wisdom (Switch) ~ Renewing the Echo

After the release of Tears of the Kingdom, I was afraid that we would never see a new game in the style of the 2D Zelda game. Yet, I have been proven wrong when this game was announced. To be very honest, I didn’t have very high hopes for this game. Especially since this game was announced this summer and released in late September. I felt that this game going to be a game to fill a gap while the developers are working on a much larger game. Now, the game is released, and I have played through a fair chunk of it. So, what is my opinion on this game? Well, that’s what I’m going to tell you in this first impressions article, while I all invite you to leave a comment of your thoughts and/or opinions in the comment section down below.

Renewing the Echoes

After a short introduction where you play as Link, the main story of this game is introduced. There are all consuming interdimensional rifts appearing all over Hyrule, and it’s eating various people in the kingdom.

Link gets eaten by one of those rifts while freeing Zelda and when Zelda tells her father, the king, about these rifts… A new rift appears and replaces the king with an evil clone of himself. Zelda gets thrown in the dungeon and there she meets a fairy named Tri. This fairy gives Zelda a special staff where she can summon objects into the world using echoes. With those echoes, she escapes the dungeon and sets out on an adventure to save Hyrule from doom before the land is fully consumed by the rifts.

Something I always love about the Zelda games is that there is a different core mechanic at the base of the game. In this game, we get two things. We got the rifts to another dark world, but we also got the magical staff, which we can use to summon various echoes into the world. These echoes mean you can tackle this game in various different ways. But I’ll talk more about that later in this article.

In terms of story, this game is hitting all the same beats as your typical Legend of Zelda game. It might be disappointing, to some, that in this game there is no voice acting anymore apart from the grunts and various emotional noises. Personally, I think it adds to the charm of this game. That’s because the characters in this game are way more expressive. While the story isn’t going to leave you at the edge of your seat of “what’s going to happen next”, it’s still well quite enjoyable, and the more expressive characters add quite a lot to the charm and atmosphere of the game.

Something I really like is how in this game, you are free to explore the world at your own peace. This game isn’t limiting you to go in a certain order. While this game isn’t fully open world like Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, it’s somewhere in between. You can tackle parts in a different order. Like the first two major dungeons can be done out of order. Each area is its self-contained puzzle, and everything you need can be found in that general area.

In my introduction of this article, I said that I was afraid that was afraid that this game would be a short one where you were able to beat it in a few hours. That it was going to be a game that’s supposed to hold players over for the “next big 3D Zelda title”. To my surprise, this game is rather lengthy for a 2,5D Zelda game. It clocks in at 25 hours of casual playtime, which is, to my knowledge, one of the longest 2,5D Zelda games.

Climbing with beds

Something I find myself doing quite a lot while playing this game was climbing the area with beds. I summoned various beds stacked on top of each other to climb a wall. Since, I wanted to know if the developers hid a secret on that cliff face.

The exploration of this version of Hyrule is a blast to do. While you visit a lot of familiar places and meet your usual suspects like the Zora and the Gerudo, it’s a treat seeing them again. The only thing I missed a bit is showing the impact of the rifts. Something that this game only tells through dialogue was how things got impacted by the rifts. I wish it was shown a bit more visually. Like different animations of the characters before and after. But maybe, Tears of the Kingdom set the bar a bit too high for those expectations where each major area had a certain curse.

In terms of gameplay, this game really leans into the echoes mechanic. It also remembers that Zelda is a princess and didn’t really have combat training. So, you have to use summoned enemies to your advantage to let them fight for you. Now, you do have a sword, but you can only use it when your power meter has charge. I always reserved that for the dungeon bosses or when the situation got pretty dicey. Since recharging that meter is either done with potions or by defeating monsters from the rift world. These enemies aren’t exactly common in the overworld, and the energy bar drains fast.

In general, this game hits the same general gameplay beats as all other Zelda games. You go from dungeon to dungeon, learning a new technique or skill, defeating the boos and moving forward to another dungeon. There are also side quests in this game, that give you a nice reward. In this game, you also have a nice system to keep track of these side quests, like in Tears of the Kingdom. Something they also brought over from that game is the cooking system to a degree.

That’s something I personally feel mixed about. Maybe it’s me, but I feel the ingredients are quite rare to come by and there is no real way to farm certain ingredients like in Breath of the Wild. I have to admit that it adds a certain charm to this game, but I feel it’s a bit under implemented here. Like when you first meet the potion creators Deku shrubs, they talk about recipes… And I had a hard time finding any.

Like in Tears of the Kingdom, you can also eat most of the ingredients without cooking them. While I personally dislike the fact you have to do two clicks to consume an item, I do understand why they did it. To avoid you consuming them too much. Yet, this is a change from the two previous games and I honestly really feel it’s a set backwards. A fine solution would be to give the player an option to switch between both systems.

Grezzo playset

This game was co-developed by Grezzo. Their previous original Zelda game was Tri Force Heroes. But, this game looks very similar in graphical style to the remake of Link’s Awakening on the Nintendo Switch from late 2019.

This game looks like a plastic toy set and it looks amazing. While I was playing this game, I felt amazed at how expressive they were able to make everything without breaking the illusion that this is a toy set brought to live by our imagination. I don’t have a lot of complaints about the visuals and animations. And most of my complaints aren’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

Just like, I don’t have any complaints about the music and sound design of this game. If you take the music and sound design in a vacuum, you would say that it sounds just like very other Zelda game. It sounds like a remix of the familiar melodies we all know and love from the Zelda games. But, this isn’t a problem, since it sells the illusion that you are a child playing with a sort of Playmobil toy set of Hyrule and trying to recreate the sound effects and music of the game.

In terms of controls, this game plays like a dream. I rarely had problems with the controls and something I really like is the fact that with one press of a stick, you can see a view from on top when you feel the camera is blocking something. Now, there is one thing that I do have some things to criticize about. And that’s about the jumping.

It’s pretty difficult sometimes to judge how high Zelda can jump. I had moments in combat where I wasn’t aware I could jump on a higher ledge until I saw an enemy jumping backwards on that ledge. I also got tripped up several times with how far Zelda can jump. Her jump is shorter than I think, and the amount of times I jumped into a pit misjudging the jump is quite a lot. Something that would have helped is something a small landing shadow when Zelda was coming down. Then again, that must have been a nightmare to implement… So, maybe I should keep her shorter jump just better in mind.

Now, something else. Something I really like is how this game has two difficulty modes. I’m playing through this game on the normal difficulty setting and I have to say, I’m happy that I did. This game can lure you into a false sense of security. I wouldn’t say that this game is hard, but it isn’t a cakewalk either. You really need to keep your wits about you and think fast sometimes.

Being aware of what’s around you is also quite important since this game loves to hide things in little side area’s and using the map system is a must. I love how you can put pins and such on the map. Yet, I have to admit that I still keep notes in my phone like: “treasure in Gerudo dungeon, need to check later”.

The more I play through this game, the more I realize that the critiques I can make about this game are more on the minor side. Like how it feels like a waste of time when you are scrolling through a long list of echoes when you just want to find one. An easy solution would be to give the player an ability to favorite certain echoes. But then again, the sort function in the quick menu has “most used”, “recently learned” … So, it’s kinda that.

Now, you have two save slots in this game. So, you can play through this game and let a friend or a sibling play through a different slot. Now, this game also autosaves for you frequently, in case you forget to save. The game also keeps like several autosaves in case you want to return to an earlier point.

Something I really like is how this game also has a quick travel system. The system works similarly like an owl statue in Majora’s Mask or a water vane in Link Between Worlds. It makes it easy when you feel stumped by a puzzle and want to return later. The fast travel locations are very fairly placed all over the land.

While I went quite critical in this game, the more I played it, the more it won me over. This game is a new 2,5D Zelda adventure game I hope we were going to see again. The last new, non remake 2,5D Zelda game was released almost 11 years ago. And, I’m so happy to see a return to this style. I’d love to see a this style also making an appearance very so often since it’s clear there are still various unique ways to explore Hyrule and tell a story about the Hyrule legend without going fully 3D.

Apart from a few small complaints you read in this article, I honestly don’t have any major complaints about this game. This is a game I’m going to finish for sure, since I’m enjoying my time with this title quite a lot. If you are into the series, I highly recommend this title to you. If you enjoy exploration and playing with unique mechanics, I also think this game is for you. This game is totally worth it’s price tag and it pleasantly surprised me.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this 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.

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

First Impression: Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (PC – Steam) ~ Role playing With Guns

Official microsite – Steam page – Wikipedia

Something that is on my bucket list for a while now, is playing a round of Dungeons and Dragons. Currently, I haven’t made the time to actually do it. But, when I saw that there was a shooter with a lot of dungeon and dragons elements, I got quite interested. I mean, I love unique shooters, so I gave it a shot. I didn’t know that this game was a spin-off of the Borderlands series, another series that is on my bucket list but… you guessed it, I haven’t played yet. But, is this game any good? I mean, I placed it on the 9th spot of best game I played in 2023, so you would think it’s good. But perhaps it’s a “me thing” and if I look with a critical eye, this game might be full of flaws. There is only one way to find that out, and that’s taking a good look at it, 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 the article in the comment section down below.

Role playing with guns

In this game, we play as a new character joining a group of D&D players who are about to wrap up a game. At the start of the game, you can customize your character. The amount of customization options you get are quite overwhelming. The amount of control you have in this game to fine tune your character is possibly a game in itself. Now, it’s a shame you don’t see your character yourself outside the pause menu or some cutscenes.

The pacing of this game fully depends on if you do any side quests or just want to explore the world. Overall, the writing of this game is charming. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and you really feel that the main characters are a group of friends who welcome a new player into their world. During the game, the personalities of the characters really shine through in the world building and through the voice acting.

We get quite the diverse cast of voice actors lending their voice to this game. I have to say, they did an amazing job bringing this world to life. The personality and the emotions of the characters really shine through, giving this game even more of a Saturday morning cartoon vibe. While the story is predictable and silly sometimes, it’s written in such a way that you always want to know what’s going to happen next or how they are going to resolve the current crisis.

The silly puns of the enemies, the charming world, the over the top writing… It’s like I said earlier, this game’s story feels like you are watching a Saturday morning cartoon. There are also various different builds you make, so I think that the replay value of this game is going to be quite high. It wouldn’t surprise me that all the different builds play quite different from each other.

Now there is a whole multiplayer section to this game. Personally, I don’t play a lot of multiplayers. So, I’m not going to talk about it in this article. But, it sounds interesting. I wonder how they balanced this game, since overall this game feels a bit easy to me. Maybe I got quite used to keep moving and prioritizing enemies after playing games like Metal: HellSigner and Doom Eternal. But, if you balance your weapons and equipment to your playstyle, this game isn’t too much of a problem on normal difficulty.

On the fly polish

Visually, this game goes for the Borderlands style. This game uses a lot of shell shading and comic book style to present their world. It has quite realistic environments, but I do have some complaints.

The first complaint is that after fast traveling or traveling between zones, the game took quite some time to load in the high resolution textures. If I compare my computer specs to the recommended specs for this game, I shouldn’t have any problem. Thankfully, this is something that quickly fixes itself. After max 5 seconds in an area, the whole area loads.

The second complaint I have about the visuals is that in some houses, their front door is open. Yet, it’s a complete black hole with an invisible wall. You can’t even enter the houses. I can totally understand that modeling a lot of houses and balancing the loot and such inside of them is a lot of work, but this is just bad. It feels unfinished. You would think that there is only one of these houses like this, but oh no. There are several. Even some side quests have an NPC exit a house and, behind the front door, it goes completely black. Why?

But my biggest complaint is how quest markers aren’t visible enough on the mini map. In the screenshot I placed a bit higher, you can see that small blue marker above my ammo count in the right corner. Guess what, that’s a main quest marker. Now, you also notice that same marker on the mini map on the top right. But, if the area isn’t on your mini map, you don’t see it. You don’t get a hint in which direction you should go. So, we start playing a game where we have to open the pause menu to look at the map.

Overall, this game looks and runs amazingly fine. Just like the options to create your character, there are a lot of options you can tweak to your liking. There is even in a built-in benchmarking feature. I raised every setting to the highest it can go, and let me tell you, the game looks amazing. The vibrant colors and the smooth animations of this game are really great. Apart from the complaints I talked about above this paragraph, I don’t have anything really that I didn’t like about the visual presentation.

Now, let’s talk about the gameplay. In this game, you go from area to arena to finish battle arena’s. Honestly, I call it Doom in a Medieval fantasy setting. That’s one of the core gameplay loops in this game. Now, this loop has one negative, the risk of the game becoming repetitive. Let me tell you, this game can be quite repetitive. Outside the battles, there isn’t a lot to do in this game, and the fact that the enemies respawn in certain area’s for you to grind isn’t doing the game any favors.

Now, you also have the overworld sections of this game. This is nothing more than a fancy level select. Now, you do have these wild Pokémon encounters… Well, I call them Pokémon encounters because they spawn randomly, and you go into a small arena to battle for weapons amongst other things. The biggest difference is that you can’t really run from these battles and don’t really have a clear indication on how many enemies are left in the encounter. Apart from that, you have some minor environment puzzles where you have to go through a dungeon to get a key to open a gate, or a cheese chip. Yeah, a cheese chip.

Overwhelming

Now, there is a lot that this game does right. The amusing story, the amount of depth are just two examples. Visually, this game is also quite good.

Now, something I don’t really like is how many stats there are in this game. It didn’t take very long before my inventory was filled with various items like weapons and armor that I didn’t know what to do with. Also, the amount of ammo creates in the area is just too much. I rarely ran out of ammo. To a point that I that the ammo that the enemies dropped fill the floor.

You also have a helpful dragon that attacks enemies for you on the battlefield and saved my skin several times. You have a whole tree to upgrade your companion. And on top of that, you also have a melee attack you can preform. But, that melee attack is quite risky, since the animation takes quite some time… more than enough time for the enemies to gang up on you and do some serious damage.

The game feels a bit overwhelming sometimes. Especially for loot goblins like myself, who don’t throw any loot away and think that we can use them to craft or upgrade them for stronger ones. And this game is also hell for somebody who wants to open all chests in this game, since your inventory is anything but big enough to hold all that loot.

You’ll need to make decisions and adapt to the environment. Thankfully, we can run around the environment with responsive and easy to learn controls. I only have two complaints about the controls. The first one is that in certain menu’s like the blacksmith menu, the way to move left/right/up and down isn’t changed with the controls in the options’ menu. That menu uses WSAD to move, and I use an AZERTY keyboard here in Belgium… So, I have to set my fingers quite unnatural to move in that menu.

The other complaint I have about the controls is that you need to hold some keys to preform an action. In general, this isn’t a bad thing, since now we don’t have to deal with silly “are you sure” boxes. But, if your inventory is full, and you are fighting, and you are standing on top of some junk… the pickup key turns into an equip key. Sadly, the communication to the player that your inventory is full isn’t strong enough and I equipped weaker weapons and armor so many times. Just pay attention to that.

This brings me to the music and sound effects for this game. The sound effects in this game are overall very impactful. You really feel the impact of the guns you shoot and projectiles hitting you. I don’t have any complaints about that part, apart from sometimes not having a clear enough sound effect when you pick up health or when your inventory is full. I mostly had this problem in hectic battle situations. Thankfully, the visual effects sometimes helped to solve this.

The music in this game is amazing. I didn’t hesitate to buy the soundtrack of this game to add to my playlist. It’s very bombastic and orchestral. It’s loud and proud. Furthermore, it fits the game writing like a glove. I tried to play this game without music and the impact of some scenes really was lost. The battles also became a bit boring.

While, I’m currently midway into the main campaign and I haven’t touched any of the DLC’s yet… I’m quite enjoying myself with this game. This game isn’t perfect, it has some flaws. But, the positives far outweigh the negatives in my opinion. I actually had a hard time finishing this article because I kept playing this game while taking notes to finish this article. While I said that the gameplay loop might be somewhat repetitive earlier in this article, I still enjoy it. I also enjoy that you can get a second chance in a battle and revive yourself. The frequent saving in this game and the fact you can have multiple characters in this game is another cherry on this cake.

Personally, I recommend this game to everybody who enjoys playing shooter games and don’t mind having a bit of fantasy in their shooters. It’s an unique RPG where your main weapon isn’t a sword but it’s a gun. It’s a great game and if this is what the Borderlands series is about, I’m quite interested to give the whole series a chance. If I would give this game a score, I would give it a 70/100 for now. But, I haven’t finished the game, so I’ll leave my final score up for when I write a review of this game or fully finished it.

And 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. 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: Fire Emblem: Three Hopes (Switch) ~ Mashing Buttons For War

Wikipedia – Nintendo.com microsite

There are only a few Nintendo franchises that are suited for a cross-over with the Dynasty Warriors series. The best one in my mind is Fire Emblem. So, it was no surprise to me that when you had the unique concept of Three Houses, a warriors-style game was going to follow. I wanted to play it since it released, but I got distracted by other games and the game gathered dust on my wishlist. Recently, I saw it was on sale on my local store, so I snagged a copy. I put it in my Switch and I knew it was going to be a game I wanted to write about from then. What do I think about this game? Is it a good game, or is it a game I have buyers regret over? Let’s find out in this first impression, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article. So, let’s mash buttons for this war and let’s dive right into giving this game a good, honest look.

Choosing your starter

In this game, you play as a mercenary Shez hunting down the Ashen Demon. This Ashen Demon is actually the main character of the mainline game, Three Houses. The story being told in this game is actually an alternate timeline of the mainline game.

That’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to play this game. In Three Houses, there is a lot going on since the main character joined the academy and started teaching one of the three houses. But, what if that never happened and things go differently? Well, you get the story in this game. Now, you’d think that this game is either filled with spoilers for the mainline game or you won’t be able to follow it if you haven’t played the mainline game.

But, that’s far from the truth. Both games can be enjoyed separately. Things gets explained and since this is another timeline, things can go rather differently. Since, in this game, the school life is extremely short-lived. After your first few battles, you meet the three Lords of the lands, and you have to make a decision on which house you will join. After that, you basically choose your story path for the game. For my playthrough, I have chosen another house from my Three Houses playthrough, and I’m glad I did. I was always curious about the other characters, and I actually want to replay Three Houses with the other house now.

The stories in the three houses are quite different from each other. Without giving too much away, I’ll say this. The stories of all three paths do intertwine and depending on which house you join, that house will succeed in their mission. Now, I’m really curious to see how different the stories will be in the end. But, for that, I’ll have to play through this beefy game. This game can take around 140 hours to beat 100%, and I’m only half way the first route.

The writing in this game is pretty good in my opinion. It feels like that, an epic adventure anime series that can really draw you in. The story can take its twists and turns, but it has extremely powerful heroes and characters that have their own little quirks and charms to make you love them and cheer for them. You clearly have your episodic structure in this game, and it fits like a glove.

And on top of that, the voice acting in this game is just the cherry on top. The same cast returns from the mainline game to this game. While some characters do sound a bit different with the different direction and the time passed, the performance is amazing. They all fit the personality of the characters and give that additional layer of charm. Not everything is voice acted, but most of it is.

Also, I have to give some additional props to the voice actors since with the amount of things that can happen in this game and the different paths you can take, it must have been a beast of a script to do. And to write for that matter. Yet, I did notice some narrative tricks being used so that dialogue can be reused. Since, there is this mechanic there is a chance to recruit enemy generals to your side, and then their dialogue is mostly written is such a way, it doesn’t really matter in which house they are in.

Depending on which house you choose, you also choose your focus in the game. In my playthrough I chose for the Blue Lions. They excel at military tactics and mostly focus on swords and spears.

During the game, you unlock materials and seals to let your fighters go to a different class, so you can balance out your team. This is something extremely important, since choosing the right crew to go into battle will make all the difference in the end. Don’t always choose the class of your crew based upon numbers, make sure you have a diverse team, and you have all different types of warriors.

Mashing buttons for war

The biggest difference it will make is in the battles. There is a strength and weakness mechanic that is extremely well-balanced and can make an easy mission extremely difficult. But, I’ll talk more about the battles later in the article. First, I want to focus on the other mechanic in this game, and that is the base.

In between battles, you can run around in your base to talk to other characters and improve their bonds for not only more lore, but also for benefits during the battles. Your typical elements like in all the previous warriors games are here. A smithy, a supplier, a market… But this time, instead of it being a somewhat boring or overwhelming menu system, it’s a lively camp. It’s a joy to run around in, but sometimes it felt nothing more than just window dressing. The main issue is that you have fast travel and nothing else really happens in the camp. You do have some animations at certain places, but they never move from their location or interact with others. In Three Houses, you had characters walking around, making the place feel more lively than it actually was. Now, we have one NPC maybe walking around and for the rest we have empty paths and market vendors that shout to buy their wares to you. That being said, it’s extremely nice set dressing. To such a degree that I now feel that the menu system in Fire Emblem Warriors feels lazy.

One gameplay mechanic that really got improved is that the upgrading of your units isn’t a mindless menu system anymore. I always felt that it was really silly that you needed to upgrade your units through so many steps each and every time. This has been streamlined quite a lot and I love it. No more grinding certain missions for that one resource to beef up that one unit you wanted to play as.

Also, various other mechanics and activities of Three Houses made it into this game as well. Things like cooking and going on an expedition with you are also present in this game. They are some fun side activities, but don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Just like finding various notes scattered around the camp, they are just nice and welcomed set dressing.

Now, explaining every little detail and mechanic of a Destiny Warriors game is asking for a long article. There is lots to do and balance in this game. I won’t be surprised that some players will lose hours just to maximize and perfect every little stat. But, that wouldn’t matter if the other main mechanic in this game wasn’t fun. How do the battles play?

Well, if you played any warrior game before like Hyrule Warriors… You know what to expect here. In this hack and slash game, you are dropped in a map with your allies and you get a main objective. That main objective is your win condition. In a lot of battles, there is also a loose condition. So, taking that into account is quite important. Do use the battle map before the battle to your advantage and swap out your units accordingly. If you strategize before the battle starts, you will make it yourself easier.

During the battles, you can take control of a maximum of 4 characters on the battlefield. You can easily switch between them with the up and down arrows of the D-pad. Knowing when the switch is half the battle. Overall, the AI in this game is pretty good and provides you with the help you need, and the other units follow orders perfectly, yet it is faster sometimes to do the fight yourself. And as soon as you learn the combo’s and master the mechanics of each fighting style, oh boy can this become an enjoyable button mashing gaming.

Your right side of the controller will get a work-out. Especially the R, X and Y buttons. The faster you’re mashing them and use R for your special skills, the fights can become a cakewalk. But, don’t rest easy. You would think that this game is going to be easy from reading my previous sentence. But, don’t get yourself fooled. The difficulty differences are quite straightforward, like explained in this section from gameguides.com. Yet, if you don’t keep your wits about you and focus on taking out the right strongholds and generals, you will be overwhelmed pretty fast. When you understand that the non-general soldiers aren’t that big of a threat, you will make it yourself easier. Also, know when to defend a unit and when to attack.

Also, you can choose if you play this on Classic or Casual mode. Whilst you can change your difficulty level if you so desire, you can’t change the gameplay mode. So, if you don’t want to play with permadeath of your characters anymore, then you are out of luck. Personally, I’m playing on normal and casual mode. I get too frustrated when one simple mistake would mean that I loose a character that might make a later fight nearly impossible and the worry just ruins the fun for me. It’s a me thing and I’m glad we have the option.

Another part of the difficulty comes in via trying to get the best battle rank in each mission and chapter. Since, the rewards of these ranks are extremely worthwhile your time. They also helped during the side missions and unlock even better weapons and abilities.

There are a lot, and I really mean a lot, of mechanics in this game so that the players who love to micromanage will be able to eat their heart out. Thankfully, this game doesn’t force you into learning every single detail of this game and lets you play how every you want. Making this game’s replay value go through the roof. Now, another related question is… Is this game best played in short bursts, or should you play it in longer sessions. Well, that all depends on how well the gameplay clicks with you. Overall, there are a lot of different things that can happen during a mission, but after a while we see the same things happening over and over again.

This game can become repetitive real fast. There are various battle mechanics and things that can happen during a battle, but the breaks in the camp are quite welcome. Also, the side missions and the additional bonus things you can do in between battles are needed to break the repetitive nature of the battles. Don’t get me wrong, the battles aren’t boring… But, it doesn’t take long before you have seen the majority of gimmicks that can happen during a battle.

Yet for some reason, I felt that the battles in this game compared to all the previous warrior style games I have played are the best flowing so far. Giving order to your units and seeing them dash off and really have an impact on the battle… It pays off. I feel like they hit the sweetspot here. I can’t really put my finger on it but the battle gameplay just flows quite nicely. Maybe it also has to do with the audio and visual presentation during these battles.

The fact you see your allies icon dashing on the mini map towards their goal and saying a quick line when they executing their task, really helps during the hectic battles. They warn you when they are in need of aid as well. The controls to easily switch between your units help a lot with quickly managing everyting. You rarely feel like you wasted your time with a mechanic.

Visually, this game also helps a lot. The animations really feel impactful and give you the feeling that you are fighting an epic battle. I can totally excuse the game not animating all your soldiers in fighting for the sake of performance, but the little fighting that happens around you to “fake” this actually happening is doing quite a lot. Rarely did the game slow down for me, so everything happened with a smooth framerate. Now, I haven’t played the two player mode in this game… And maybe the framerate there isn’t the best… Especially in the previous Fire Emblem Warriors game, I played the two player mode and oh boy, that wasn’t the most optimal mode.

Also, looking at screenshots of the two player mode, I feel like it does a number on the amazing visual presentation of this game. It cuts the screen horizontally in half and I’m sorry but it just doesn’t look right. Maybe on a big screen it looks better but, on the Switch itself… I shudder at the thought. It’s a shame that the visuals looks so streched and wrong in multiplayer since they are quite nice.

Almost the sweetspot

This game almost hits the sweetspot on being a “perfect” game, it’s insane. Yet, there are somethings I find strange how they got through the cracks.

First of all, the visuals are amazing. You really feel like you are running through a real world that’s going through a big war. The visual style is medieval fantasy and it really shines through in the whole game. Yet, when somebody crosses their arms in a cutscene, the hands keep upright. To a point that it is immersion breaking sometimes. Oh, and the same thing happens in cutscenes when people want to place their hand in their side. The gap between their side and their hand is big enough to fit a your whole arm in between. Also, in cutscenes, everybody is mostly in their idle animation apart from when they are talking. And this is something that annoyed me a lot in this game. Dare to keep that shocked pose instead of just going back to idle. It breaks the flow of the story and it feels stiff and slow.

The UI is extremely clean and easy to understand. It’s a blast to navigate and gives you all the needed information. Yet, after unlocking a class for a character you get the question if you want to change it or not… without seeing which stats are impacted and which ones aren’t.

Using your abilities in battle is quite easy to do. Just press “R” and choose the right ability. Yet, the very powerful ability using R+A doesn’t always work as you expect. Sometimes I feel that the very strong final attack just didn’t trigger and got skipped. Also, the meter changes to being almost full again so I started wondering if it was glitched or not.

There are also various item pickups in during the battle. But, it’s not always too clear what item pick up does what. For some reason, I always confuse the blue and purple pick ups. And it’s so easy to waste a pick up, it’s rather annoying. Also, when an ally is wonded, you can’t easy heal them or move them to pick up an item or break a green pot. Little sidenote on pots, these red pots on the mini map sometimes look quite brown in game. Maybe because of lighting or maybe it has too much blue and green added to the texture.

These small issues started to grab more of my attention as soon as I decided to write this article. Like not all sunrays have good anti-aliasing (making straight lines look less jagged basically). It is distracting once you notice it. Just like the hand thing I talked about earlier. It’s a shame since the cutscenes are more lively now since they use 3D character models instead of character portraits in Fire Emblem Warriors.

Something that doesn’t have any issues is the soundtrack of this game. The soundtrack really pumps you up during the battle and helps make the game feel even more impactful during battles and relaxing during camp visits. The orchestral score is a joy to listen to and I have to admit that I listen to it here and there while I’m working. It’s a great soundtrack and I’m glad it’s added to my playlist.

The sound effects are pretty great as well. They stand out quite a lot so it’s easy to know what is happening and it always gives the needed information to the player to not make it a guessing game. Thankfully, you also get some visual information as well so people with hearing problems don’t loose out on the advantages the sound effects can give you.

The amount of options you have in this game is incredible. You can tweak the game to your favor, you can also change the whole button lay-out to your wishes without changing the default button lay-out of your Switch. While I prefer playing this game with a Pro controller, the game plays smooth with joycons as well. While the same supports one joy con to play the game, do yourself a favor and play with either both joycons or a pro controller.

Now, this game does have an autosave feature, but I’m also really glad that this game have several save slots. While you only have 8 slots in this game, that’s more than enough to experiment in your playthrough. The only minor issue is that when have saved before the last battle, the game forces you to save before you enter the war map the last battle. Without mistake. One simple if loop where the game checks if the player has saved a few minutes manually before and it wasn’t an autosave would solve this minor issue.

Overall, I fell in love with this game. Compared to the previous warrior style games we got from Nintendo franchises, this is one of the better ones. It isn’t overwhelming and you don’t have to micromanage every little stat, but it does provide you with that option. It’s the same addictive hack and slash gameplay we are used too in these games but it also manages to flow a bit better.

While the game does have some minor issues here and there, they aren’t too big of a deal. Like when you teleport in your camp to a facility you can press A to interact but when you teleport to a unit, you have to walk a few steps towards them before you can interact.

If we ever get another warrior style game, I think that this game has set amazing foundations for the next title. The main complaint I see other reviewers say is that the combat isn’t diverse enough. Personally, I somewhat agree that some classes play extremely similar but, it’s one thing they should focus on expanding next. Do more with combat styles like archers having a larger attack range but being weaker in close combat. Or give mages the chance to buff their allies.

What we got in this game feel like an extremely solid foundation for the next games. I’m so glad I played this game since it’s one of the better ones I played this year. I was afraid that I was burned out of the warrior style gameplay, but no. This game drew me right back in and reminded me why taking care of the details is so important in making a good game. I can’t wait to see what else this game has to offer since I’m going to beat it, that’s for sure. And after that, I should beat the other Fire Emblem games that are still on my backlog… shouldn’t I?

I highly recommend this game to everybody who enjoys warrior style games, hack and slash games, Fire Emblem fans and everybody who enjoyed the Hyrule Warriors games. This game takes leaps and bounds to improve itself compared to the previous warriors game in the Fire Emblem series. While it has some small distracting issues, overall this game delivers an amazing experience where you can sink a lot of hours into and with a highly replayable game. So, what are you waiting for soldier? A command to play the game? Well, here it is! Pick up your controller and join the war with quirky, unique characters that takes itself just seriously enough. Join the fight in something that feels like you were young watching your favorite adventure TV-series every Saterday morning whilst you feel extremely powerful and wonder what’s going to happen next. That’s how I personally felt while playing this game.

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

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.

First Impression: We Who Are About To Die (PC – Steam) ~ It’s But A Flesh Wound.

Steam store page – Official website

Usually, I try to avoid writing about early access games. Especially when they are still in development. Because, you never know if my article and review is still going to be relevant down the line. But, this time I’m making an exception. A while ago, I got a press key for ‘We who are about to die’ from the solo developer of this game. The solo developer is actually a fellow Belgian and created this project out of passion. So, as a Belgian hobbyist blogger I feel I have to write an article about his game. Although, I got a press key to review this game you don’t have to worry. When I go into the arena to battle this game, you as the crowd will get my 100% honest opinion on this game. Now that the countdown is starting, and I’m readying myself to enter the arena… I hope you as the audience for this article tell your opinion/thoughts on this game and/or the content of this article in the comment section down below. So, let’s go and start the match!

Editorial note: the review version of this game is the first publically released version after the beta versions of this game. (Early Access v0.1)

A story discussion

In this game you play as a starting Roman gladiator who is trying to raise through the ranks. In general, there isn’t really a story in this game. This game more focuses on the gameplay and it’s mechanics. Depending on what you enjoy in games, this can be a positive or a negative. Personally, I’d have like a bit more world building with a small intro or something. There are several mechanics like the four hosts who remain a bit “faceless” because they don’t have a backstory at all in the game. Now, the backstory of your own fighter is created on your battles. That works a bit like Rogue Legacy, where you can create bonus traits on your previous runs.

At the other hand, I can understand that there is no real story in this game since now the game is more open and anything can happen. We can create the story and lore ourselves, which gives the game a more sandbox-y feel. This can help with immersion into the game. Now, because certain mechanics in this game… I think it would be hard to create a story of any kind for this game and the characters.

Maybe the only thing that I’d love to see in the future in the game is a bit more historical backstory in the game. What I mean by that is that, this game uses the terms like Aspirant. But, what is an aspirant? Some history lessons would be a nice touch to this game.

So, what do you actually do in this game? The idea of this game is that you play through various battles to build up your fame and budget. With the fame and budget you can acquire various things like new gear or bonus buffs. But, a stronger character doesn’t mean a guaranteed victory. In one of my runs, I did a 5 vs 1 match and my team of 5 was beaten by that one dude since he used a strong morning star that was tricky to block.

This game is somewhat unpredictable, because there is a lot of randomness involved, you have to decide if using your hard-earned cash and fame is worth it to heal or get better gear or better save it for another roll. But do you risk waiting? Since, you might not survive the next battle and the money passed on to your next character is only a fraction of it.

Let’s please the crowd

Trying to describe the genre of this game is one of the harder things to do. Part of the core gameplay is a fighting game. In the arena, you have to fight and win the battle. Depending on your performance, you may have multipliers for your gold and fame. But, if you please the crowd by making nice hits and not hitting your teammates, the crowd throws additional weapons and gear that might win you the match. I’ll talk more about the fighting mechanics later in the article.

This game is also a strategy RPG. Since, you have to strategically uses your resources to improve the gear and stats of your character. Also, the more you use a certain weapon, the more damage you do with it. So, you have to take that into account since you won’t be using the same weapon and gear throughout your run. Using your gear efficiently is key to survival in this game. I lost one run because I forgot to repair my shield and I got cornered with my enemies, and I was unable to get a shield that the crowd threw onto the battlefield.

Earlier in this article, I already talked about the randomness in this game. So, this game is also part roguelike. Due to the rougelike elements in this game… the game becomes a huge balancing act. This game isn’t the easiest out there, but it’s forgiving in a way. It’s easy to get back into the action with a new character and to build him up. But, since the new character has different stats and perks, the gameplay is new and fresh.

If I had to place this game in a certain genre, I’d say that it’s a sort of action simulation game about gladiatorial combat. Since trying to put it in a better category would be a nightmare.

Now, let’s circle back to the combat system. This combat system isn’t your typical combat system. The best way to explain part of the combat system is the following: image that the main controls of the fighting system is the Wii remote. This game doesn’t have mention controls but the idea behind it isn’t too far off. To swing your weapon, you have to left-click and swipe your mouse into the direction you want to hit. The strength of your swipe also influences the strength of the attack. Also, when you right-click to defend, the location of your shield or weapon depends on how you swing your mouse.

There are a lot of different layers to the movement and combat that make the combat feel janky and unpolished, but it’s the entire idea behind this game. Since, you can interrupt and attack and decide to throw your weapon or shield to the enemy instead. The combat system might need some more iterations for it to feel perfect, but it’s a unique system. It may put some people off playing this game, but I find that it adds to the charm of this game. Since now the game is a bit more newcomer friendly towards people who don’t play a lot of fighting games. You don’t have to remember a lot of combos for strong attacks, you need to learn how these directional attacks work and how to use them in your favor.

This brings me onto the point of the controls of this game. The starting tutorial explains the mechanics you can use in this game quite well. The only tutorial that can use some better wording is the tutorial on how throwing weapons work. It took me a while before I was able to get throwing weapons to work consistently. Now, it’s a bit funny how the wording in the Aspirant Trainer is better than the actual tutorial. This Aspirant Trainer is a great way to quickly check your abilities in the pause menu, when you are unsure how a certain mechanic works. A very minor UI complaint is that when you click the “?” mark outside of battle, is that clicking on it again doesn’t close the explainations. You have to “approve” it on an empty part of the screen.

A great piece of advice, stay in the tutorial area as long as you need to. Get used to all the mechanics and little quirks of this game, since unless you reset your whole character and everything, you are unable to return there. And trying to learn the mechanics on the battlefield is anything but a good idea.

The current gameplay loop is as follows. You start first on the battle preparation screen where you can decide to heal, get new armor, bribe enemies… Here you make the most difficult choices since a few bad mistakes might cost you your character. When you are finished preparing your character, you choose a battle to praticipate in and fight. This can be a 1vs1, 1 vs many and many vs many.

Overall, fights are short. Most fights are done in 5 to 7 minutes. Currently, there are only 12 out of the 14 planned arena’s in the game but every arena feels unique and has it’s own additional challenges and quirks. Like one has wooden panels you can hide behind and another has a central elevated stage. Depending on your preformance in that battle, you get fame and coins for winning the battle. Loosing the battle, will mean you have to start over with a new character but you can pass a few things on, especially money.

Your goal is to buy your freedom from being an aspirant. Basically, an aspirant is a prisonner in acient Rome that’s fighting for his freedom. These goals is extremely steep and aren’t easy to achieve. Don’t expect to get it with the first few characters unless you are very good in these type of games. The difficulty in this game is a bit unforgiving. But, it has that “just one more run” mentality written over it. That “I’m going to get it this time” phrase is one I said often. And then, I’m out of glory to re-roll the fights I can enter and I get fights I know I can’t win… And then I win one by the skin of my teeth.

I’m quite curious what the other gameplay types and modes are going to be. Those who you can see on the roadmap of this game.

This game is the excellent game for one or two quick rounds and can is even fun for longer play sessions. The balance of between being not repetitive and repetitive is small but currently the game is balacing on it just fine. Especially, since you have to fight with different weapons and a unique battle system that is so much fun once it clicks.

For seven years?!

This game has been under development for seven years. Most of it is done by Jordy Lakiere, and it’s really impressive. For example, the amount of detail in the visuals is mind-blowing. The game looks wonderful and runs extremely well. In the options’ menu, you can set your max frame rate to 60FPS or 120FPS, and let me tell you that this game runs extremely smooth. My gaming desktop is getting rather old, but I didn’t have any big frame drops or lag in this game.

The effects and animations used in this game are also superb. There are a lot of weapons & shield combinations, and they all have unique animations. Something I really like is how the game slows down when you are going to make a strong hit or about to kill an enemy. Sometimes the blood animations might be a bit overboard, but then again… It feels quite rewarding when you kill that one annoying enemy with that big shield that’s blocking all your attacks since the start of the match.

The only minor complaint I have about the visual presentation is that in team battles, it’s a bit unclear sometimes who is on your team and who isn’t. This issue is mostly present in nighttime arenas where visibility is lower or when the other fighters aren’t wearing a lot of armor. Due to your teammates following you, I sometimes mistook my allies for enemies. And that negatively impacts your rewards. But on the other hand, it can be a balancing thing.

In terms of audiovisual presentation, the game is also pretty good. The music is a joy to listen too but the sound effects and sound design really adds to the atmosphere. There are a few things I’d improve on. First, I’d change the sound effect when you don’t have enough gold to purchase an item to a more “error-y” sound effect. It’s a bit “basic” and didn’t communicate the message always. Maybe add a little visual animation as well instead of only a message in the left corner.

Secondly, I think the sound effects of the weapons breaking and/or throwing should be polished up. Quite often when I was playing a character with a spear, I didn’t realize I have thrown my weapon. I feel that those sound effects get a bit too lost into the gameplay and doesn’t communicate with the player enough when you are unarmed.

And finally, I feel like the pause menu should have music as well. Since, it’s quiet, and I find that a bit boring. It could also be a great sound test when you are in the options’ menu.

Something I really like is how this game has an in-game menu to report bugs. It’s easy to use and helps the developer to quickly gather bug reports and things that the players don’t like.

Speaking of which, here are a few things I’d change and/or improve:

You can only see the week you are on, on the battle select screen. Why not show it over the whole screen?
The music doesn’t “follow up” with each other. Sometimes there is a silence gap when one track fades out and another one fades in.
What is “mouse X” and “mouse Y” in the keybind menu? Is that moving up and down / moving left & right? And how would you rebind that?
Make it easier to compare stats of armor. Since, sometimes I had to write things down or take a quick screenshot.
Buying an item is only possibly when you click on the icon. It also only shows the stats when you hover over it. Why not the whole box?
Why not have items of different status like Legendary have a special color around the icon box? It’d be easy to swap things around from your storage to your character.
During the game, I’d change the option in the pause menu of “Save & Quit” to “Save & Quit to main menu”. Since, that’s what happens. You don’t quit the game.

Most of those are polishing suggestions. Now, the roadmap promises more gamemodes and more things that can happen… which is all fine and amazing to look forward too. But I hope to developer doesn’t forget that sometimes it’s not about the amount of content but about the quality of the content. That’s what I sometimes forget when writing as well. I sometimes forget to make sure I still enjoy writing and write good and informative articles instead of trying to push out one a week to have more articles.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time while playing this game. I took me a battle or two to “get used” to the game but then the game hooked me. If you enjoy action simulation games or just want to try something different… This game is excellent. The game is also still in development, so more content is going to come in the future. The game is also fairly priced at 22€ here in Belgium and with the amount of polish and content there is already here, it’s a steal. The developer is also very open in his communication. I mean, look at this massive thread about the received feedback and what he is going to do with it moving forward. So, the fact he is talking about addressing a lot of the current feedback in the first patch(es), is amazing.

I think I may revisit this game on my blog after a while, when there are more patches out to see how the game evolved. Since, this is a game to keep your eye on. I’m so glad that Jordy reached out to me to try his game since it’s a real indie gem and I can’t wait to see what he is going to do next with it.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. This amazing gem of a passion project game that’s worth your time if you enjoy action fighting games with unique mechanics. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: Island Saver by NatWest (Switch) ~ Saving The Planet With Banks?

Official website – Nintendo.com microsite

I love games with a unique story or goal. When I saw Island Saver by NatWest for free on the Nintendo Switch eShop, I didn’t hesitate for a second. While playing, it suddenly dawned on me. The publishers of this game is an actual English bank from Westminster. Is this free game a hidden ad for their bank or is it a fun game? Or is it something else? Well, allow me to tell you about my experience as a Belgian citizen who doesn’t know anything about the English banking system what my 100% honest thoughts and opinions are! Meanwhile, I also invite you to write a comment about your thoughts and/or opinions on the content of this article and/or the game in the comment section down below.

Let’s save the world!

In this game, you play as an unnamed Bio Agent, and your goal is to clean up a peaceful island from pollution. You get equipped with a blaster which can vacuum and shoot out items. This also doubles as your water gun to clear out the goop on the island.

The story in this game is very light. To be brutally honest, the story isn’t anything to write home about. It’s a very generic plot. Yet, I’m going to praise it for something else. As an IT admin in two art schools here in Belgium, I have seen a lot of “edutainment” games that try to teach children things. But most of these applications and games I have seen are mostly exercise machines with a pretty skin.

Not in this game! The basic mechanics and idea’s of taxes and the risks of pollution are explained with mechanics. You also get from time to time, quick and small pop-ups referring to the real world. But, these are far and few between it isn’t a problem at all. This game really reminded me of those old school Humongous Entertainment games, those that sneak actual education in their games without it feeling like a lesson.

NatWest also provided some nice work sheets together with this game on their website for teachers and parents to use. Yet, nothing about this is forced into this game. All these mechanics feel natural in this game, and it all flows extremely well.

Now, what is it that you have to do in this game? Well, in this game you go to various islands to go from area to area, to clean it all up and help the animals living on the island. You do this by vacuuming up all the trash in the area so that plants can grow. You deposit this trash in the correct recycle bin while these animals eat from the plants. These animals are special bank animals, which have to fill up to be saved. As soon as you have saved all the animals in a certain area, you can move on to the next one.

There are a few other mechanics, like you can only store 20 items of the same kind per inventory slot. You also have to clean the goop left by the enemies in this game. But here is one of the first negative things about this game. This game does have enemies but besides undoing some cleaning progress and temporary ink your screen… They don’t do much.

We are so close, oh so close.

The disappointing enemies are the perfect example of one of the biggest flaws in this game. This game is way too easy. Because of this, the game barely has any challenge.

Yet, the gameplay loop of cleaning up the island can be enjoyable for some people. Especially if you enjoy games like Slime Rancher. But there is no real risk in this game.

You could argue that the challenge can come from collecting the special twenty items on the island. But, that’s an optional collectable. When I finished the first island, I found 17/20 without even really trying. So, even that isn’t challenging.

So, let’s see if there is any challenge to be found in this game? Let’s see, you sometimes have to buy seeds to progress from the in-game store. But wait, the game showers you with coins… I can’t remember one moment where I didn’t have enough coins to purchase what I needed.

I’d talk about various other examples, but the biggest issue is that this game doesn’t have enough meat around its bones. And then, the cracks start to show. Because of the repetitive nature of this game, it’s better played in short bursts. And to be quite frank, if you have played the free islands… The DLC islands don’t offer too many new things to justify the asking price.

It’s a shame, since a lot more could have been done with the world that was created here. Maybe we could have used the trash we vacuumed up to create new houses for the animals, or maybe we had to water the plants more than once to make them give off their fruit. But, alas, the game stays too much on the surface level and doesn’t dare to dive into the depth of its possibilities.

I wish it did since there is a lot of potential here. Visually, this game looks amazing. Colorful and family friendly. It’s also easy to understand so the tutorials are short, sweet and to the point. But, then the game lacks a map screen so, it’s a pain to find certain areas when you get lost in the later parts of the level. It’s also a pain to sometimes find a full bank animal in a large area… Since, when a bank animal is filled, it stays in place until you vacuum out the coins from its belly. Yeah, these bank animals are basically walking piggy banks.

The animation in this game is adorable and works really well. Together with the clean UI, it quickly shows the player all the information that you need… But, then finding the enemies can be a pain with the annoying radar. You barely see the distance between you and the enemy. And on top of that, the amount of times the enemies just stopped in front of me, so I could shoot them. It’s painful.

Beware, it breaks.

It’s clear that a lot of passion and love was put into this game. The joyful and relaxing music and charming sound effects are another examples of that. This is a game you can wind down with and relax.

At one hand, I miss some challenge in this game… But, on the other hand it’s still enjoyable to have a game that you can wind down with after a long day at work.

The fact that this free game isn’t riddled with microtransactions left and right is a blessing. The only content you’ll have to pay for are two optional, additional levels. But, here is where I have to report on something. I don’t know yet if this is a freak occurrence but, in one of the DLC levels, the game broke for me.

Broke as in, really broke completely. Just look at the following Tweet I posted yesterday. So, some background. Quite often I play games I want to review on the train from and to work. During one train ride, my game decided to crash during a cutscene that would allow me to go to the next area. Now, I think some variables got flipped but not all. And sadly, the automatic saving system screwed me over here.

Since, when I reloaded that save after rebooting the game, I was unable to vacuum up any items. The gun kept being stuck in the vacuum mode and my rumble went into overdrive. And when I tried to open the pause menu or the menu to summon a bank animal to ride… The game went into a full softlock. This is a situation where a game keeps working, but almost everything locks up, and you can’t do anything about it. Sadly, to recover from this, I had to fully wipe my save file and restart everything. It’s a shame to see that certain softlocks and bugs are still in the game. Thankfully, a lot of the reported ones got fixed but, I don’t see this issue getting fixed almost 2 years after release.

Just like I don’t have high hopes of seeing the power-ups coming to the game. Since, it always says: “coming soon”… But the last update to this game was in September 2020.

Yet, I don’t think I can complain too much. I mean, this is a free game released during a pandemic. Also, when you look at the website of the developer Storm Cloud Games, this is the first game that greets you. It’s also released for free on almost every platform. The amount of work that this would have taken is just insane.

Overall, this game is clearly an edutainment children game that put entertainment first. With easy to learn and easy to master controls, this game is quite enjoyable to play in short bursts but the lack of depth in the game and the repetitive nature of the game makes you wish for a bit more. The game has the charm but not the “umph“. I’m honestly afraid that other similar games like Slime Rancher blow it out of the water.

Would I recommend playing this game? Yes, I do recommend it for casual players who are looking for an enjoyable charming adventure game. But, don’t set your bar too high… Since, this game doesn’t dare to go deeper into the ocean than dipping its toes into it. But, maybe that’s enough to have an enjoyable train ride to school or work for you.

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

Review: AI: The Somnium Files – The Nirvana Initative (Switch) ~ Let’s Dive Again

Official English website – Wikipedia page

One of my most favorite genres is an adventure visual novel. A game with a deep story with memorable characters and unique gameplay that draws you into the world of the game. Examples are Corpse Party where a cursed school plays tricks on your mind or Ace Attorney where you play as an attorney that takes on the strangest cases. I could list examples here for quite a while, like Time Hollow, where you get a pen that can mess with the past in certain circumstances. My favorite series in this genre are the Nonary games. I sometimes quote various moments to this day. I was beyond excited that after the trilogy ended, a new series by the same writer started in 2019. AI: The Somnium Files. Now, after I finished that game, I couldn’t wait to see what Kotaro Uchikoshi and his team were going to turn out next. And that is a sequel to AI: The Somnium Files, which picks up 6 years after the original game. But is it any good, or is this a sequel that we should avoid? Well, that’s what I want to talk about in this review. This review is spoiler free, so if you haven’t played the game… You shouldn’t worry about that. But in any case, let’s dive right into the game while I welcome you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article.

Editoral note: this game also released on all other major platforms. I chose to play this game on Switch since I played the original on Switch as well.

Have you played?

In the original game, you took on the role of Date. An investigator at ABIS with a special AI companion implanted in his eye. Now, in this game, that isn’t really the case anymore since the focus is more on daughter Mizuki. In this game, you also play as Ryuki who is another investigator at ABIS. Both these agents are involved in a cold case which they are trying to solve for their own reasons. After the case going cold, suddenly 6 years later a new clue is found that totally reopens the cold case. So, why did the case turn into a cold case and why suddenly after 6 years are there new clues found?

In terms of explaining the story, that’s all I’m willing to say to avoid spoilers. I know I might be cutting it a bit short or being extremely vague, but this is a sort of game where you should go in as blind as possible. The story in visual novel adventure games like this one are best experienced as blind as possible. At least, that’s the way how I enjoy it the best. And sidenote, to avoid spoilers I’m going to explain some things in this article with rather generic terms instead of the in game terms.

Something that really surprised me in the opening few minutes of the game is that there is something implemented that is something I think should become a standard in other visual novel games. A sort of check to avoid spoilers of the original game. Since this game is a sequel, there is a potential that people start with this game before the original. And if you won’t get yourself spoiled on the previous game, certain pieces of dialogue are changed if you are unable to answer the questions about the ending of the previous game. Then, it skips over the dialogue that spoils parts of the previous game. Apart from a few lines, it doesn’t change too much, so you won’t be missing out if you answer the question or not.

In terms of writing, this game really delivers. The new characters don’t feel out of place at all. I honestly sometimes felt that the new characters were background characters in the original game… The voice acting in this game is one of the strongest points of this game. They make the characters come to live and pull me in the game’s world so hard. There are some weaker moments in this story, but overall, these are far and few between. In general, this pacing and story of this game is good.

Something that’s really great in this game is that there is a sort of glossary. When you forgot who a certain character is or what a certain word means, you can easily look it up in your file. There is some amazing value in there as well. So, I highly recommend reading through it.

Explore the dreams

Just like in the previous game, in this game you have to explore people’s dreams to find answers and clues for your investigation. If you played the previous game, it’s very familiar. In these explorations, you have 6 minutes to unlock the mental locks of a person to find the big clue that’ll let you progress into the game. Each interaction costs a certain amount of time, so you have to be careful and really think your actions through.

You do have 3 “retry coins” you can spend to travel back to a previous checkpoint. So, if you mess up, and you want to restart a certain section with a bit more time, you can travel back. If you don’t have enough retry coins or game-over, you’ll have to restart from you’re the start of the exploration. Also, in these explorations, it’s possible that the story splits into two paths. Now, I highly recommend that you explore all paths to the end before going to another path.

There are some additional mechanics during these explorations that can influence the time used, but that mechanic is somewhat underused in this game compared to the original. I played this game on the highest difficulty setting and to be honest, while the puzzles are interesting and a blast to figure out… I found them a bit too easy. Furthermore, I have to admit that I had to write some puzzles down on a piece of paper, but rarely did I get stuck or didn’t know right away how to solve a puzzle. The original game was more challenging.

With that said, it doesn’t mean that with easier puzzles that this game is less fun. Maybe I got lucky in figuring them out, or the experience of solving these puzzles from the previous game helped me out here.

Something I really like is when you full beat one of these dives, you unlock that dive without any time limitations. So, I can find out what the dialogue is in the wrong options and enjoy more of the enjoyable writing of this game.

This game controls extremely well. I don’t have any complaints on how this game controls. There is one minor complaint I have. There is one mini-game in the pause menu, which you can’t select by going through the menu. For the longest time, I thought I was able to only play this in handheld mode, but you just have to press the minus button on the controller to enter it. But I’ll talk more in depth about the mini-games and such later in the article.

So, these explorations in people’s minds isn’t the only mechanic in this game. There are also reconstructions you have to do. This is where you have to search for clues in a crime scene to answer a question. These moments are a lot less punishing since they don’t have a time limit.

These moments are a nice distraction to the game. Since, they help to sell that there is actual investigation work going. Yet, some of the hardest puzzles are in these sections. But, if you get stuck, the biggest hint I can give is to write the puzzle down. In these sections, there were one or two puzzles that would work a lot better if you were able to look at the clues, so that’s why I highly recommend you to write them down.

Another gameplay section of this game are the moments with quick time events. These moments are easily the weakest link of this game. I found these moments a bit boring since they are basically an interactive cutscene. You know when they are coming and these moments would have been so much more fun if they weren’t quick time events since they slow the scene down when they happen and these scenes are supposed to be fast paced actually. I’m sorry, but the implementation of the quick time event scenes in this game isn’t the best in this game. All these moments blend in with each other a bit too well.

Now, you can change the difficulty of the quick time events and the exploration moments. So, if you want to focus more on the story instead of the gameplay, that’s totally possible. Lowering the difficulty makes the game easier since it has less penalties for you. The game doesn’t lock any content away from you by lowering the difficulty.

The final gameplay section you have in this game is the investigation section. Where you go from place to place, so you can talk to the various characters to gather more information. During these moments, you can look around and investigate the environment for additional world & character building, jokes and dialogues.

These moments are just the right length. I never really felt that the conversation went on for a bit too long. Also, you can save during at any time during these moments, so when you have to leave the game and want to come back, you can comeback to a save point. This game also saves automatically. But speaking about saving and loading, this game has only one save slot. So, don’t forget about that.

Costumes and such

The music and sound design in this game is quite enjoyable. The music fits this game as a glove. I have already added it to my playlist, so I can listen to it while I’m working.

In terms of sound effects, the high quality is there as well. I don’t have any complaints about them. Most of the sound effects are just like the previous game, and they worked extremely well there.

Visually, this game looks excellent. There are some very minor rough spots, especially in low lighting, but they didn’t bother me too much. Overall, the visuals fit the atmosphere of the game extremely well. The new locations created for this game fit extremely well in the world. The animations in this game are great as well. I did notice some minor animation flaws here and there, especially with the mouths not always closing after some dialogue. But on the other hand, they help put the expression of the character come to life.

Now, let me talk about the performance of this game. Overall, I noticed barely any performance problems during my playthrough. There was some minor slowdown here and there and I felt like some cutscenes ran at a bit lower framerate compared to the rest of the game but overall, nothing really major in that regard. The game did crash on me. Three times even. Thankfully on moments where I didn’t loose to much progress but it did happen.

This game took me around 35 hours to complete and also to see some of the additional content. So, I think that the price is totally worth it.

One of the last things I want to talk about are the mini-games and the DLC. There is DLC for this game in the forms of alternative customes for the AI assistants in this game. Overall, the additional content is quite cheap but it’s 100% costmetic. If you are a fan of silly alternative customs, they are the right fit for you.

Now, during the game you can unlock eyeballs. With these eyeballs you can purchase the unlocked costmetic items via the bonus menu in the main menu. You can also unlock concept art and other materials. Some of these items even have some easter eggs in them!

What you can buy with these eyeballs depend on your progress in the game. Now, something I really like is how you are unable to unlock everything when you have seen the true ending of this game. You’ll have to go back into the game to go in alternative routes and maybe try the wrong options to have a new evalution. There are in total 40 evaluations to unlock and completing the true ending, I still had 16/40 left to find.

The only dissapointing thing is that there are barely any hints in the game to find these remaining endings. I think it would be a nice feature if you are able to see on which day you can unlock that evalution after you have seen the true ending. This doesn’t take away the challenge of searching for the ending since each day has a lot of content to go through.

There are two “mini-games” in this game. One is a sort of advice room where the AI assistant of the character you are playing as plays a sort of shrink for you as the player. I rarely used this mode apart from it also being the dressing room of the costumes you bought. The combinations you can make with dressing up your AI ball are numerous. I just wish that there was a button to “sync” costumes between them.

Anyways, there is one other mini-game I have to talk about. This is a sort of Tamagochi where depending on how you answer the questions, your tamagochi AI-ball evovles into different AI-balls. Each 20 minutes you get a question. You have four different possible replies. Depending on your replies, a certain stat increases and you can get another creature. Since, it all depends on the stats you increase. You can also unlock a guide when you reach a certain type which can help you unlock all the others. It’s an enjoyable destraction to the game but apart from it being a nice source of eyeballs to purchase costumes, I found that there is nothing really to it. While I can totally see some people enjoying this, I’m not one of those.

Overall, in this article I have mostly praised this game. But, there are a few things that don’t work at all and can be improved in a patch or a sequel. The first big thing is the small font of the option menu. If you play this game in docked mode and sit a meter of two (which is +/- 6 feet), the option screen becomes close to unreadable. Thankfully, there is a zoom feature on the Switch and the top right infobox gives some hints… But still, that menu is too small. If they wanted to keep the same visual design, just make more pages with a bigger font.

A nitpick I have is that when something is added to the file, and it’s in the manual… The green dot is so close to the binder of the manual that you can barely see it. I think changing the color of the manual in the file would have been a great move.

Another nitpick I have is when you go to the bonus section from the main menu, you only see Aiba there. I have never seen the other AI-ball there. I found this a missed oppertunity. It would be kind of fun to have a random chance to see either Aiba or Tama there.

The final thing I dislike about this game is that there is no real run button in this game. You do have a skip button, that’s pretty close to the “auto” button, but you can’t run in explorations. I would even not mind it with having a run button and it costing twice as much time to move around… Since, the walking speed is a bit slow when you are playing again to find the other endings.

So, with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. So, I think it’s high time to wrap up this article in a nice conclusion so people who are looking at this article to know if this game is any good or not and don’t want to read everything have something to quickly read.

Conclusion

The good:

+ Enjoyable story where you can avoid spoilers of the original.

+ Amazing soundtrack.

+ Creative puzzles.

+ Great controls.

+ …

The bad:

-Some slowdowns/crashes can happen on the Switch version.

-Too small options menu.

-Missed chances with quick time events.

-Some minor issues in terms of polish like one of the mini-games being reachable with a button instead of it being highlighted when scrolling through.

Final thoughts:

To answer the question I posed in my introduction, I think that this game is a worthy sequel to the original game. The game is quite a lot of fun to play and I had a blast playing it. The game has it’s weaker moments but those overall are no big issue compared to the overall package. This sequel can also be a great entry point into the series and there are a lot of winks to veteran fans.

There are some issues for sure and the story has some weaker moments but I might repeat myself but the positive and fun moments far outweigh the negative moments. I enjoyed this game so much when it finally released here in Europe that I even pulled an all nighter during my summer break while playing this game. It’s so much fun.

Thanks to it releasing in my summer break, I have already beaten the game and now I’m looking for the things I missed but so far, it’s one of the best games I have played all year.

Personally, I highly recommend this game to everybody who enjoys adventure and/or visual novel games. This sci-fi thriller story is a blast to play through. This game comes also recommended if you enjoy playing mystery solving games. The original game now has a demo as well on the Switch eShop and if you enjoy that, this game or the original are going to be such an amazing time!

With that said, I really have said everything I wanted to say about this game. 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 welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 90/100

First Impressions: Sherlock Holmes – Crimes and Punishments (XBOX360) ~ Hipster CSI in Ye Olden England

Wikipedia entry

I can’t really explain why, but sometimes I really like to play detective games and trying to solve a crime. That’s why I’m really into the CSI games. Now, when one of my neighbors in our yearly local garage sale started selling his XBOX360 and PS4 collection, I saw he had Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments. While I’m well aware that this game got a port this year onto the Nintendo Switch and Steam, I chose to play the XBOX360 version. Mainly since it was €4 at the garage sale and the Switch version would have set me back way more for just a bit of visual upgrades? Well, I wanted another excuse to boot up my XBOX360 once more. But, did it stay on, or did I start looking toward other games and/or consoles? Well, let’s talk about it in this article, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on the content of the game and/or this article.

Hipster CSI in Ye Olden England

It’s no real surprise that you take on the role of Sherlock Holmes in this game. Together with your trusty best friend Watson, you are solving strange cases left and right in London in the Victorian era. This game takes place in 1893. In the first case, you investigate the murder of an old captain with a vile reputation. Explaining any more of the plot would ruin the story.

The cases in this game aren’t that long, and they are somewhat unrelated. So, if you are looking for a game with character development or growth… This isn’t the game for you. The writing in this game is more aimed at players who want to relax and enjoy a fun murder mystery like an episode of CSI. With some familiar characters, but each episode is a different case.

The writing itself is quite enjoyable. I really feel that I’m in a Sherlock Holmes story, and I’m enjoying every minute of it. The story really scratches that itch, I have to play some more detective games but only this time, it isn’t with modern technology.

The voice work is also quite good. They made the atmosphere of this game come to life. Every line of dialogue and thoughts are voice acted. Now, there is one thing I’m a bit on the fence about in terms of the voice acting. Maybe it’s because I have been reviewing games for so long and know a bit about developing games as well, but I had times when I felt like some lines were a bit generic.

For example, when you are searching in Holmes’ archives and find the piece you are looking for… It’s always the same line. Sometimes recording more than one line, and randomizing it, helps with the immersion of the game. Otherwise, you are running the risk of it all blending together and making some mechanics feel a bit boring. Or why does doctor Watson nearly always ask where to go next. It’s as if they didn’t record other lines for him. Maybe some fun banter or remark about the location. Like, in the first case, about the well-kept garden. I wouldn’t mind it looping, but something more than “Where to go next, Holmes” and Sherlock not even replying. Since, now, the line feels a bit out of place to me. Thankfully, these moments didn’t bother me too much and are overall quite rare.

I’m well aware that perfection doesn’t exist, and thankfully so. Thankfully, this is the only problem I have with the writing. Very few lines are a bit generic or out of place. And maybe I really notice them because I wanted to review this game and the overall quality is quite high, and I wondered if there was something to critique about the story.

Pop! Here I am!

Visually, this game looks good. The environments are quite detailed and look amazing. But, it isn’t perfect. This game suffers from popping issues sometimes. Especially when you go from a cut scene to gameplay, where some textures just take a bit longer to load, and it just looks weird. I had one especially bad case of this when Holmes’ case book didn’t load the correct texture for like 30 seconds. And I was wondering what the text was on the book.

This happened to me while I was in the “load screen” wagon between two locations. During the loading screen, you can view your case book or enter your thoughts’ menu. And, to be honest, I highly advise you do, since the background scrolling during these wagon scenes don’t always look great. I even saw moments where the background suddenly restarted. And the backgrounds are such lower quality compared to the rest of the game, it’s a shame. Just like the small screen tear issues this game sometimes has when exploring around.

The animations of this game are good as well. They make the game come to life that much more. Yet, sometimes I feel that some characters move a bit too slow or lack a few frames of animation to make it look like the game it’s dipping in frames. But that isn’t the worst issue I have with the visuals and animation. That dubious honor is for the fact that sometimes when exploring, Holmes can “raise up in the air” on an object and when you move the camera just a tiny bit immediately snap down to earth. This happened more than once, but thankfully it didn’t cause any game breaking bugs by for example placing me out of bounds.

Maybe I’m being too harsh on the game. I mean, image the amount of work the developers had to put into the visuals. Especially when you are able to chose if you want a first person camera or a third person camera by the press of a button. This goes so seamless it’s a surprise to me that this works so amazingly well.

Also, you can dress up Sherlock Holmes as you want. The amount of different variations is just silly and adds to the impressive visual possibilities that this game has. Dressing up is just one of the mechanics this game has. You’ll need it sometimes to trick a character into talking.

Now, what exactly is it that you do in this game? Well, you investigate a crime and you look at the crime scene for clues. Sometimes you go back to Baker Street to preform experiments or the search in your archive. While you are exploring the locations, you can also talk to suspects to gather more information about the case.

During your research, you’ll find a lot of clues. Some of these clues need to be interacted with. In your notebook, those clues have a special icon so you know that you need to research in your archive or preform certain experiments with them. Also, the task list is quite handy to keep track of what you still should investigate.

During your research, you’ll be able to use your imagniation. This is a sort of “recreation” button for some scenes in the game. Or when a clue is quite hidden, you can use the strong observation skills of Holmes. To avoid these mechanics becoming a needle in a haystack story, you’ll notice those icons at the top right when you need to use those skills.

Another important mechanic is what I call the “connect the logic dots” mechanic. Here you need to connect two clues to form another clue. It reminds me a bit of Time Hollow which has a similar mechanic, but explaining that would spoil parts of that game. When you connected all your loose clue’s, you can try to make sense of them all. Connecting the right dots will lead you to a conclusion. But is it the right one? Who knows? Be sure to think it over more then once. Since, seeing if your theory is correct is a lot of fun to see play out.

Something that this game does a lot better compared to the CSI games is that this game gives you some freedom. You can actually explore the area the crime took place and look for clues. Some of these areas are huge but expertly crafted, making it a breeze to explore them.

The responsive controls make it quite fun to walk around and explore those areas. Thankfully, Holmes has infinite stamina, so you can also run around when you find his walking pace too slow. And when you forget how to control the game, you can just press the two joysticks of your controller to bring up a handy chart of the games’ controls.

There are two things that controls a bit awkward at first and that’s searching in the archives and searching in your case book, but it doesn’t take long before you can get the hang of it when you know that almost every button has a different purpose, and you look at the buttons that are displayed on the screen.

Skipping the skip

One big difference compared to the CSI games is that there is no hint system in this game during your case. If you are stuck, you can’t get any hints from somebody. This is something that some people like and others aren’t really fond of. But, just like the CSI games, this game has mini-games and puzzles.

Now, you can skip most of these puzzles and mini-games by the press of a button. It barely has any influence on the game if you played or skipped the puzzles, but it’s a nice addition that it’s there. When you just want to get on with the game instead of figuring out one stupid puzzle that otherwise would have locked you out the rest of the game. Something that would make it even more perfect is that in the end of the case, you can see how much puzzles you have skipped. That way you can make it an “honor” thing where people who completed the game without skipping any puzzle get an achievement or something.

Speaking about the ending of the cases, you can come to the wrong conclusion. If it has consequences or not, I won’t reveal to not spoil the game, but it’s great to see that you are able to redo it when you want to see the other endings OR want to correct yourself. You can also choose between either reporting the criminal or letting the criminal go. And that’s also everything I wanted to say about that mechanic. It leads to some quite interesting things.

This game isn’t too difficult. The biggest difficulty in this game is when you overlook a clue and reach the wrong conclusion. If you are stuck, I highly advise you to go over your case notebook and imagination. Since, you might have missed a clue. Only once I had to look up the walkthrough, and it turned out that I was doing two things in the wrong order. Apart from one puzzle in the 3rd case, this game doesn’t have any “moon logic” puzzles. The puzzle in the 3rd case isn’t hard, but it takes a while to click with some people what the idea behind the puzzle is.

This game has achievements. And it’s quite a lot of fun to go for the achievements in this game. They don’t add a lot of replay value since this game doesn’t have a lot of replay value. Unless you decide to start speedrunning it to see the endings you missed since you didn’t start over when you choose your moral stance.

Usually in my reviews, I write about the audiovisual presentation right after the visual presentation. But, since I had some more things I wanted to talk about in the visual presentation department, I’m talking about the audiovisual presentation later. And I can be very short about it, it’s nothing special. Don’t get me wrong, the music is good and fits the atmosphere like a glove… But, it doesn’t stand out to me. I find the music a bit to the generic opera side of things, and I would have a hard time matching it with Sherlock Holmes outside the game. I think the main issue is that it doesn’t feel like a “song” or “track” but more like a 10 or 20 second melody that’s repeating in somewhat different tones for 3-ish minutes.

Now, the sound effects are used amazingly well. While exploring, it really adds to the atmosphere sometimes. Really listen while exploring that one area at the end of the 3rd case, and you’ll understand what I mean.

Before I go to the conclusion, I want to talk about the game’s preformance. A big complaint is that the load times are quite lengthy sometimes and honestly, I have to disagree. I have played games with longer load times and the load times in this game didn’t bother me at all. It was the ideal moment for me to sip of my drink or to think about my theory of the case.

The game ran always at quite the stable frame rate (apart from some small moments in cut scenes). But, there is one thing that should have worked differently. I find it a strange decision that when you are waiting for a door to open since the game needs to load the area behind it… You can move away from it. It gave me the impression at first that my input didn’t register. Locking Holmes in place would communicated that a bit better to the player.

Anyways, when you read this article you might think that this is a very flawed game. If you got that impression, you reached the wrong conclusion and didn’t see all the evedince I left in the article. You might want to think it over and you might reach the intended conclusion (which you can always see at the press of a button when you have beaten the case once).

I fell in love with this game. I totally understand why so many people see this game as one of the best Sherlock Holmes games. It does so many things right that it’s still so much fun after 8 years later, this game is still a blast to play through. Of course, the XBOX360 release has some issues. Especially in the visuals department where the preformance can be spotty sometimes and in some places the game really shows its age.

But did those problems bother me? Oh heavens no. I still enjoyed myself and I was quite happy that I was able to pick up this game for quite a cheap price. It also made me quite curious to play the other Sherlock Holmes games in my collection and that’s perfect since my summer break just started.

So, if you enjoy mystery adventure games like Professor Layton, CSI or Ace Attorney AND/OR if you enjoy point-and-click adventure games like Deponia or Broken Sword or Monkey Island… I think you owe it yourself to check out this game. Since the port earlier this year, this game is on so many platforms and quite easy to get so if you want some better preformance, I highly suspect that the PS4 and Switch versions’ll outpreform the XBOX360 version. But hey, the XBOX360 version is still worth playing!

And with that said, I have reached my conclusion about this highly enjoyable game and where shall we go next–

Thank you for reading this article so much. 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: 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

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