Recent reviews by BirdCute

The levels are okay. The last one is a bit difficult.
You'll need 25-50 minutes to beat the game. Buy if cheap.

Melvor Idle is an idle game packed full of content. The theme is copied from Runescape, which helps the game be more fun.

A small and fun game akin to Hill Climb Racing. There are many different levels, each has a different car that you can upgrade to try to get to the end of the level.
The only downside is that the first level is already moderately hard, so it's a bit frustrating to keep playing until you achieve the first victory.
I recommend this little gem!

Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle is a surprisingly good puzzle game with great graphics full of gore and diverse cutscenes.

You control the legendary Jason Voorhees and you're on a mission to kill everyone. Solve the puzzles, level up, get new interesting weapons and kill in even more ways.

Released on Friday 13th, this game features a whole lot of horror-themed levels. If you happen to know a game called Slayaway Camp - this game was made by the same devs and the gameplay is also the same. If you don't know those yet, the rules of the game are simple: kill everyone by your character across the board until you hit all the enemies.

Altogether, there are 12 episodes available, each of those has 13 levels to beat. The first two episodes are really easy, even too easy at times. After that, levels start getting a bit more difficult and finally require you to think a bit. If you ever get stuck on a level, you can get a hint or, if that's not enough, the entire solution for the level. The solution is played very quickly on the screen and the positions of the characters are reset after that, so you at least have to memorize something in order to beat the level. Hints are usually quite useful but don't give out too much, usually, they just tell you who to kill first or last. You can also skip a level if you don't feel like completing it, but you need a certain level of kills if you want to unlock further chapters.

Most of the game is available for free, you do have to pay for the last four chapters, however. Each of those will cost you $3, which is a bit much in my humble opinion - especially since each chapter will only keep you busy for around 20-25 minutes. If you feel like paying, there are also seven different skins available for Jason for $1 each.

After each level, you get some XP and after you get enough, you level up and receive a crate with a weapon inside. Using different weapons doesn't have any effect on the way you play the game. It does, however, change the cutscenes of the final kill of the level to show a different way to kill with this weapon.

Some levels feature environmental hazards, such as lakes and endless holes in the ground. You can use this to your advantage by scaring people enough to make them run into their death, but you must also be careful as those hazards are also deadly to you. Some chapters feature cute kitties as well and those must not be killed under any circumstances. This can make the game even trickier as the hazards tend to be placed in a way which makes killing the kitty a frequent occurrence.

Even after completing all chapters, there is some more content to enjoy. You can access The Daily Death from the main menu, which is a kind of a daily challenge. Those are usually quite challenging, but after completing 13 of them in a row, you can a crate with a rare weapon. Another available game mode is called Murder Marathon, in which you have to kill as many people as you can in a row by pressing the spacebar above a tiny red area of a screen-wide bar across which a little arrow moves left and right. The red area gets smaller and smaller, which obviously means that getting a long kill streak can get quite difficult.

There are also a lot of achievements waiting for you to unlock them if that's your thing. They encourage you to try all possible things in the game, such as trading in your weapons for more valuable ones, playing Murder Marathon until you reach a really high combo and finishing all levels in a chapter. However, there are some achievements which will require you to pay (completing those for paid chapters, for example) or will at least be quite hard if you don't pay (getting all weapons from the silver/gold tier).

The music and the sound effects are quite good as well. I especially liked the rock soundtrack which plays when you start Murder Marathon. The pause menu also features a button with "Ki-ki-ki ma-ma-ma" written on it. When you press it, it plays a sound of Jason saying "Ki-ki-ki ma-ma-ma" for some reason. It doesn't really make this game better or worse, but it made me laugh so I thought I'd share it with you.

The graphics also deserve a mention - as you can see from the screenshots, this game looks really great. The kill animations can also be quite entertaining albeit a bit disturbing if you only care about the puzzles and want to play as quickly as possible. When you first start the game, you are also given an option between the SFW and NSFW version of the animations (that's not what they were called, though, but I can't remember their exact wording) if you happen to dislike blood but don't mind killing virtual people.

Since this is a free game, you really should give it a try if you fancy puzzle games. The puzzles are quite demanding later in the game, but you can still help yourself with the hints and solutions if you don't want to strain your grey cells too much. There is a lot of free content in Friday the 13th: Killer Puzzle, and there is also some more if you don't mind paying the developers. If you want to get more weapons more quickly, you can also pay for crates, but they are ridiculously expensive, if you ask me (20 crates cost about $4.5 and each crate only has a 1% chance of containing a gold tier weapon, which means it costs over $20 to get one). The chapters aren't too cheap as well, but I guess if you like the gameplay it's still not a terrible deal, especially after getting so much content for free.
Overall, I can only recommend this game - I don't think I've seen any bugs or anything like that. I'll certainly be playing more of this whenever I feel like playing puzzle games.

With love,
BirdCute

Note that my copy of this game was obtained for free for reviewing purposes. However, this did not affect the quality and objectivity of the reviewing process.

Party Hard Tycoon is an Early Access game with incredible graphics, catchy music and not very catchy gameplay.

Check out this review and many others on Save or Quit: https://saveorquit.com/2018/03/17/review-party-hard-tycoon/

In this game, you play as a manager of different nightclubs. You can rent places, buy and sell equipment, hire various people and hopefully make as much money as possible. After a while, you get to hire people for more money, rent places for a higher rent and buy more costly equipment.

I would like to start by saying that I had high expectations for this game as I am a huge fan of the original Party Hard. Now, I was aware that this game doesn't have any similarities when it comes to gameplay, but the least I was hoping for was a game that would keep me as hooked as the first one. Although some aspects of this game do their job perfectly, others do not, as one should expect from a game that is still in early access.

Let's start off with the main menu. I can say with confidence that this menu is among my top three, it's just really good-looking and modern. The biggest letdown, however, came when I entered the options menu. As soon as I opened the game, I could hear my graphics card struggling. I opened the Task Manager and it showed that the GPU usage was one average at 90%. On the main menu. Yikes. Anyway, I tried lowering the settings in the options menu and I was sad to see that any meaningful graphics settings are more or less nonexistent.

When you start a new game, you are thrown into a chat window with some person, claiming to be some kind of expert when it comes to nightclub managing. This is meant to be a tutorial of some kind, but I can't say I learned much about the game at that point. I was trying and failing very hard for the first 45 minutes and even after I can't say that playing was a very pleasant experience, but more about that later. The dialogues with the women in the "tutorial" are, in my humble opinion, very poorly written. About half the time, she appears to be an arrogant piece of sh** and when she's not, she's sending you smileys and motivating messages. What's up with that? I don't usually care much about the dialogues in games that are obviously not focused on them, but I was still quite annoyed with that.

As I mentioned previously, this game was very hard for me at the start. After the tutorial, you are given a task to reach 30 or so hype on your first night, which proves to be next to impossible, especially when you don't have a clue what's going on. Within the first few days, your money supply is going to fall dangerously close to zero and even if you learn to play by then, it might be too late to rectify your in-game financial situation.

The game is also extremely vague in expressing what the people who visit the parties actually want. You can't predict what people are going to want to spend money on when the party starts, yet you are expected to spend a considerable amount on beer barrels, tables, bars and other food-related objects, not to mention decor and speakers.

On each location, you have a limited amount of electricity you have available. You want to cover the whole area with speakers, otherwise a bunch of people are going to stay as far away from the house as possible and pretend they don't hear the music. That, however, you can only afford by placing the smallest speakers everywhere due to the unreasonable energy consumption by the larger ones. Fine, I guess I'll place a ton of small speakers all over the area, that'll work, right? Well, no. As it turns out, you only get half the hype from the small speakers, which mean less money for you.

After playing for a short while, I managed to learn at least a bit about how the game works and I managed to attract a whole bunch of people to the party. And again, there was a problem. Although I earned a lot by entrance fees, the waiter just couldn't keep up with the rapid rate at which the tables were being cleared by thirsty guests (not that I'm complaining about them being thirsty, you most certainly have the right to drink as much as you want when you pay $80 to get in :P). This meant that guests were leaving at an alarming speed, which pretty much ruins what would otherwise be a very successful night. And there's not a single thing you can do about it (or maybe you get told about it later in the next part of the "tutorial").

Another bad thing about this game is just how long events take. Especially early in the game, you will be frustrated because long after most guests have left, you still have 30% of the time or more left and there's nothing you can do to speed things up, even if there's obviously nothing going on anymore. It's a shame, it really made me want to stop playing the game a couple of times, especially after having a low turnover.

Let's focus on the positive aspects of the game for a paragraph or two, now. The most positive thing I can say about this game is obviously the graphic design. I loved the way Party Hard looked and the same goes for Tycoon this time. The developers are clearly very talented when it comes to pixel art and picking the right colors for the awesome contrast they achieved. If it wasn't for the amazing art style, not many things would keep me playing.

The soundtrack was okay most of the time. It wasn't extraordinarily catchy or anything, but it kept my ears busy in a pleasant way and I wouldn't mind listening to the tracks a bit more.

If someone asked me to describe the game in one word, I would most likely produce a prolonged and overly frustrated "uuughhhhh" sound. I feel like this game is bad, although a part of me is convinced that it was me who was bad at playing it. However, after speaking to a few friends of mine who also own the game, they pretty much all told me the same thing - they gave up after about fifteen minutes. There's just not anything really special about this game. The gameplay is tedious and too beginner-unfriendly, I just felt helpless for the first half hour of playing it. Things just aren't explained the way they're supposed to be and everything seems to be too difficult because of that.

Overall, I would not recommend purchasing the game unless you're absolutely sure you're going to like it. It feels like such a shame - I know there's a lot of content in this game compared to the small piece that I've experienced, but I've been forcing myself to play for what felt like tens of hours, which is not something you'd want from a game.

With love sadness this time,
BirdCute

Note that my copy of this game was obtained for free for reviewing purposes. However, this did not affect the quality and objectivity of the reviewing process.

Bio Inc. Redemption is a fun disease simulator, which lets you either fight for the patient's life or evolve the disease enough for them to die. The choice is yours.

Check out this review and many others on Save or Quit: https://saveorquit.com/2018/03/20/review-bio-inc-redemption/

In singleplayer mode, you can choose either life or death. In the former, you try to heal the patient and in the latter, you try to kill them as fast as possible. To spice things up, the developers recently added a multiplayer mode, in which two players compete against each other. One is tasked with the patient's death, while the other one tries to counteract the disease's effects.

When you open the game for the first time you are shown a cutscene, which was of unexpectedly high quality. I sincerely enjoyed those 60+ seconds. In this short time, they show you that there are two completely different game modes from which you can choose - you can either be the villain or the hero. When the cutscene ends, you are shown the main menu, where you can choose how you want to start playing.

Choosing any of the two game modes shows you the appropriate levels along with the ability to play the tutorial. Both tutorials are well-made, they show you all the basics you need to know in order to play the game successfully. The only remark I have is that it ends too quickly - they should at least let you kill/heal the person completely even when all of the game mechanics have been thoroughly explained. But this is not a big deal, really.

Each game mode has its own levels and challenges. At first, only one level pack is unlocked. In order to be able to play the next ones, you have to earn enough hearts/skulls on previous levels. The amount you get is based on the difficulty you play on - all levels can earn you between one and four units. If you're not able to unlock the next packs, you simply have to play some level on a higher difficulty.

The levels can appear to be quite hard at first, it may even seem like unlocking new levels is next to impossible. However, each time you level up, you get an XP point, which you can assign to a booster before starting a level. This can help you a lot if you decide smartly when picking the bonus.

When you do so, you finally get to play the game. On the left side is the Systems panel, which shows you how the patient's body systems are doing. Each system has a percentage of "health" left, based on which you decide which diseases you should prioritize when buying treatments/diseases.

On the bottom of the screen, there is a button which opens the disease menu. There, you can buy more diseases or try to diagnose the problem based on the symptoms (this depends on the mode you picked, obviously). When you're in-game, the so-called Bio Points spawn on the patient's body, which you have to collect as soon as you spot them in order to prevent them from disappearing. You can then spend these points on the Disease panel.

The multiplayer mode is not much different in terms of the gameplay. You can play with your friend on Steam or other some random player who also happens to be looking for a person to play with. One of the players plays Life while the other plays Death. While I was playing with JimDeadlock, a fellow SaveOrQuitter, I first picked Life and I won with absolute ease. This is due to an apparent imbalance because of which I was receiving enormous amounts of Bio Points. This meant my victory was imminent and prompt - my opponent didn't stand a chance. Similarly, he won the next round when we switched roles.

There are some other differences in multiplayer. If you pick Death, you get 40 BioPoints right at the start of the round and you have 60 seconds to spend those points on what you think will bring you victory faster. Although this somewhat justifies why you get much fewer points later on, there is one thing which I truly dislike - you can't save any of those 40 points for later. Buying 40 points worth of diseases right away isn't necessarily a good way to start the game as it really doesn't fit everybody's strategy.

Still, I had a lot of fun playing the multiplayer mode. It was much more exciting to play with another human being and I'll definitely do it again, especially if any balances are announced.

There are still some more things I was to express my opinion on. First of all, the soundtrack fits the game really well. Especially when the patient is close to their death, the heart rate beeping other noises make the game much more exciting to play and I often found myself leaned towards the screen because I was so immersed into the game.

I would also like to point out how great this game looks. The user interface is really intuitive and you quickly figure out everything you need to know. I really liked the icons of systems and diseases - in most cases, you don't even need to read to know what they mean.

Not everything is so great, though. During the nine hours of my time I spent playing this game, the game crashed four times. Although this game supports saving the current round and continuing it at a later time, I had to start the round again after crashing.

I had a wonderful time playing this game and I can recommend it to everyone. The price isn't that high and especially if you have a friend who is willing to play with you, you will most likely play this game for a substantial amount of time. The levels are just challenging enough to make you feel excited and rewarded for what you've achieved. The game also looks and sounds good and apart from the occasional crashes and the somewhat imbalanced multiplayer mode, you will definitely have a good time playing.

With love,
BirdCute

Note that my copy of this game was obtained for free for reviewing purposes. However, this did not affect the quality and objectivity of the reviewing process.

Boo! Greedy Kid is a casual indie puzzler with a very simple-to-understand, yet challenging levels.

Check out this review and many others on Save or Quit:
https://saveorquit.com/2018/04/09/review-boo-greedy-kid/

One day, you ask your father for some change to get that can of soda you really want from the vending machine. Your father declines your request in a rather impolite way, causing you to lose your temper, scare him to death and collect his money. As it turns out, you still don't have enough, which means that you have to do the same to everyone in the 99 level building you reside in as you did to your old man.

First of all, I would like to mention the really cute intro. This is where the game teaches you the ability you will be doing for the next two hours: scaring someone from behind. The controls stay the same for the rest of the game - the only thing that changes is the difficulty, which steadily rises through the 99 story (with the occasional spikes).

The controls are quite clumsy if you don't play with a controller - everything is cramped together on the left side of the keyboard. Luckily, the Settings menu allows you to change all bindings to whatever you prefer. I have one more complaint regarding the controls: the game never tells you how to do a roll. You are simply shown that you have to sneak past the policeman somehow, but you are never told directly that you can simply roll past the enemies. I was stuck on the 10th level for quite some time before I noticed that there is indeed such a thing as a "dodge roll" in this game. I opened the keybinds menu, where I finally discovered that pressing Q does the trick. Playing the game suddenly became much easier.

I'll focus more on the gameplay now. Since just scaring a ton of people to death is obviously too easy, there are also different enemies who are able to harm you. There are two types of police officers - one charges at you until he hits you and the other one shoots at you. You have three lives available, which means that you can only take two hits until you die. Some people also have more than one life. After you scare them, they start raging and running around. If they hit you while in "rage mode", you will lose a life. In some of the levels, you might also encounter doctors - those do not need to be scared to death in order to progress to the next level, but they can bring the scared people back to life if they see one. Doctors have two lives and if you kill them, you get a one heart recharge.

In later levels, you will also encounter the SWAT units - a much more dangerous form of police officers. Their ability is to climb up and down between floors without having to use the door, which means they can sometimes trap you in an uncomfortable and unpredictable spot. Still, they aren't much of a nuisance once you get used to them. Robot-cops, however, are a nuisance. They only appear in about five levels, but they are much harder to pass. The will shoot at you on sight with an extremely fast bullet which kills you in a single hit. These levels usually include a lot of hiding and require perfect timing if you want to win.

Each level consists of multiple floors between which you can travel using doors. Two doors of the same color are connected and it can sometimes be tricky to find the right path to the last remaining living person while trying to evade the police. After each level, you are given one star by default. The remaining two stars can be obtained by getting to the exit elevator in a small enough amount of time and getting all of the possible money from the levels. In most cases, getting the money isn't that hard. However, trying to finish in the required amount of time is usually quite demanding, especially when you have to deal with robot-cops.

After beating every single level, you are taken to the final cutscene. Personally, I was quite disappointed as the kid did not get his soda after all. My best guess is that I would have to beat every single level with 3 stars, which I certainly do not intend to do as some levels have quite unrealistic demands.

For those who love achievements, this game offers 20 of them. The ones I got were fun to achieve and weren't too difficult. Be aware, however, that in order to get every single achievement, you will need to beat all levels with all three stars.

If you love creating your own content and sharing it with your friends, this game also supports Steam Workshop. After subscribing to user-made content on Steam, you can it accessible in the game from the main menu. When you launch the game, you are also given the option to use the included level editor. I opened it and played around with it for a minute or two just to see if it works and it looks like a good enough tool for making the levels for this game.

Finally, I would like to mention the soundtrack and the graphics. Boo! Greedy Kid is really a gem when it comes to that. The exciting, yet repetitive music puts you in just the right more for scaring people and the graphics are certainly worth looking at.

Overall, I have to say that I enjoyed this game. The levels were just challenging enough me and the player feels like it, trying to get every single star is certainly a goal which would require even more patience and grind.

Although I had absolutely no problems at all with the controls after changing them in the menu, I have to say that I feel a bit disappointed how the game didn't inform me about the ability to do a dodge roll. I almost quit playing because of that since levels were becoming too difficult to beat without rolling past the enemies.

If you like playing casual games and just want to have some fun, Boo! Greedy Kid might be the game for you. I completed all the levels in about two hours without repeating too many of them. I'm not too sure about the $5 price tag, but you should consider purchasing the game should you ever see it discounted.

With love,
BirdCute

Note that my copy of this game was obtained for free for reviewing purposes. However, this did not affect the quality and objectivity of the reviewing process.

FoxyLand is a somewhat difficult platformer with cute graphics and interesting levels. While this game brings nothing new to the genre, it should keep you busy for a couple of hours.

Check out this review and many others on Save or Quit: https://saveorquit.com/2018/02/24/review-foxyland/

You are a fox living in the wonderful FoxyLand. One day, some nasty eagle kidnaps your female counterpart and the only way to save her is to collect diamonds across the 27 different levels. Makes sense? Sure it does.

Let's start right at the beginning - the main menu. You can see right away that this game is a mobile port (I checked and the game is indeed available for a variety of platforms - including Android), which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I do feel like the captions on the buttons were a bit too big. As expected, the settings menu doesn't offer a lot of settings to mess with - you can only mute the game and toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode. I was at least hoping for some graphics settings due to this game needing a surprising amount of system resources.

Right after you choose the first level, you can see that the appearance of this game is definitely one of its positive features. Vibrant colors are used for the environment and the distinction between background and important objects can be easily made. Another thing that caught my attention are the animations - it is not common to see a platformer with that amount of detail when it comes to things that move. The most eye-catching gimmick is when the treetops swing lightly when you pass them. Marvellous.

As I mentioned before, FoxyLand can be quite hard. I've certainly played platformers which demand even more dedication or skill, but still. The learning curve is not that steep and it was certainly well thought-out. The first level acts as some sort of a tutorial, although it never claims to be one. The first few levels are simple, they just introduce new enemies gradually and get you used to the traps you have to be careful about in the later levels.

In order to beat each level, you have to collect all diamonds (there are usually three or four of them) and then reach the level exit. While doing that, you should also pick as many cherries as you can and use up your three lives. When you reach the end of the level, you are given up to three stars, depending on your performance. If you want to get all stars, this usually means you have to get all of the cherries while not dying at all. Mostly, this is not even that difficult. If you manage to complete a level, chances are you fulfilled the requirements for three stars already.

Level design is quite good, although it brings nothing special. All of the levels use the exact same assets, which means that you don't get to discover new "areas", which is common in games of the same genre. No jungle, ice lands, the underworld or anything like that - just plain grass (and some caves here and there). Although I didn't really mind that, I understand how some people might get bored if they're used to see more variety in platformers.

I mentioned cherries before, now let me explain what they are good for. When you have enough of them, you can use them to skip levels if you're stuck on a difficult one. Apart from that, there is also a store accessible from the main menu where you can buy different outfits for your fox. There are about ten items available, although unlocking them all would probably require a fair amount of grinding.

When exploring the main menu a bit more after rage-quitting one of the more difficult levels, I was also pleasantly surprised to find that this game also supports online play. I was sad, but not surprised, to discover that nobody ever plays this game, meaning that finding a random person to play with is not something that can happen. I noticed that one of my Steam friends has the game on their account so we played together for a few minutes. Although the experience wasn't anything too special, it was a fun way to spend some time with your friends instead of playing singleplayer levels.

While playing this game was overall a pleasant experience, I still have a few complaints, the first one being the controls. Although the WASD keys are widely accepted as a way to move characters in video games, I'm really used to playing platformers with my arrow keys. Apparently, you can't use that in FoxyLand and you can't change any controls, which is kind of bad.

The next issue I have is the quality of the port. Although the game doesn't seem to have any reasons to be in need of a lot of system resources, it used ~40% of my GPU power, which is a much as most first person shooters use on my computer on medium settings. I think it's safe to say this is not reasonable for an average platform game (with graphics similar to an above average Flash game you can play in your browser).

The only other thing I would like to mention is a positive one - the soundtrack. It's a very simple yet pleasant 8-bit song. I liked it a lot despite the repetitiveness.

So, should you buy this game? I kind of think so, it's not exactly the pinnacle of the platformer genre, but it's solid fun for a few hours, especially if you have a friend to play with in the online mode. The levels were entertaining enough to justify the price of $3 and it's exactly what you would expect when playing a platformer.

The graphics are really cute, the music is awesome, and the levels are challenging enough to keep you interested. Without any major bugs or flaws, I think this is something worth having in your game library.

With love,
BirdCute

Note that my copy of this game was obtained for free for reviewing purposes. However, this did not affect the quality and objectivity of the reviewing process.

Hexlide is a casual puzzle game, visually similar to Hexcells. Although it's quite enjoyable, it doesn't take a lot of time to beat it.

Check out this review and many others on Save or Quit: https://saveorquit.com/2017/11/30/review-hexlide/

Each level starts with a hexagonal grid. The grid consists mostly of grey tiles, some of which have a colored border. There are also some completely colored tiles and your goal is to move those to the bordered tiles of the same color in a limited amount of moves.

Hexlide initially caught my eye because I am a big fan of the Hexcells games. Although Hexlide doesn't have a very similar gameplay, it looks very similar because of the hexagon shapes and the simplistic look.

The main menu doesn't complicate matters too much - when you open the game, you're two clicks away from starting the first level and this is when the main rules are explained. They aren't very complicated and you can more or less just start playing without having to pay very much attention.

There are 36 levels, which seemed like a lot to me at first, but it later turned out that it doesn't take much time to finish all of them. Most levels are very similar to each other and nothing apart from the second color, which makes the game a tiny bit harder, is introduced. This is one of the main problems of the game: once you get used to the concept, it doesn't really get any more difficult and it wasn't that brain-power-demanding in the first place.

I've beaten all 36 levels in about one hour. Although I had a nice time playing the game, I wish there was something more to it. Sometimes I felt like I was starting next levels just to finish the game instead of wanting to crack the puzzles. I believe the biggest problem with this game is that it gives you way too many moves to complete the level. Although using fewer moves gives you a higher score, I can't say that I've ever been tempted to replay the level just to achieve a higher score. Having fewer moves available would force the player to think a lot more in order not to lose on a level. During the entire hour I was playing, I didn't run out of moves even once and me almost running out of them occurred only twice.

After completing each level, you get to see its leaderboards. There are two tabs on the screen: the global leaderboard and the one only showing you your Steam friends. I can't say that the second one was of any use since the game is relatively unknown which is why I don't have any friends playing this game, but I found the global one to be a nice addition to the game. Should a very competitive player ever play Hexlide, having a lower score than other people might convince them to play the level again and try to perform better.

The soundtrack is quite pleasant to listen to. It features a calm melody played on a piano, which doesn't distract you from the puzzle, but still keeps your ears occupied and focused on the game. There isn't much more to say about it - overall, I just feel quite positive about it.

This time, I'd also like to mention the excellent Settings menu. There's a bunch of options for music and display related stuff, more than you can usually find in puzzle games.

You can get two Steam Achievements in Hexlide, one for completing the first level and the other one for completing all of them. It wouldn't hurt to include a few more of them, maybe if the user manages to beat a certain level with a small enough amount of moves? Something like that wouldn't hurt in order to keep the player a bit more occupied.

There aren't any Steam Trading Cards available, which is a shame. Steam Cloud saving also isn't present, but I can't say I expected an hour-long game to have that, anyway.

I enjoyed the entire time I was playing this game, but I do feel like the developer is quite courageous for setting the price to $5. For only an hour of gameplay, this definitely seems a bit much. If you're a puzzle fan, you might feel like this game it a bit too easy - it just lets you beat most levels without ever making you feel challenged or puzzled, which is something most players expect to get from a game of this genre.

I do recommend this game, but definitely not at this price. Consider buying it if you see it discounted and only if you don't mind playing puzzle games that are a bit easier, otherwise you might feel like you wasted your time.

With love,
BirdCute

Note that my copy of this game was obtained for free for reviewing purposes. However, this did not affect the quality and objectivity of the reviewing process.

Laser Lasso BALL is a fascinating fighting game with great graphics and fun gameplay for those who think they would like to play a more deadly version of volleyball.

Check out this review and many others on Save or Quit: https://saveorquit.com/2017/11/17/review-laser-lasso-ball/


The basic objective of this game is to kick the ball away from you and kill your enemy before he manages to smash your head with a ball throw so fast it can break rocks. Basically. Although the game is initially fun, there aren't many things to discover once you figure out the basics.


First of all, I would like to point out that this game definitely looks astonishing. The visuals remind me of Party Hard, mostly because of the contrast between the dark colors and the bright neon colors. The brightest part of the screen is obviously the ring in the middle. I'm also a big fan of the effects of the game on the crowd surrounding the two players. When either one of the players or the ball is thrown out of the ring, they hit the crowd with force and leave behind a whole bunch of bodies.

The gameplay itself is quite entertaining. After I figured out the controls, I had a lot of fun playing. It takes a little while to understand the mechanics and to get used to spinning around the center all the time. You can either play against your friends locally or against the computer. The virtual opponent can be really really difficult to play against, I've only won a handful of matches against it.

Although the game is really entertaining, I realized after playing for a while that there is a surprisingly small amount of content available for the player to discover. No matter how much you play, you won't get any new skins, new skills, new arenas, nothing. There is no storyline at all to make things more interesting. I really have mixed feelings about these because I never felt bored at all, but I always had a feeling that something was missing, that there should be at least something to explore and unlock.

The soundtrack is definitely amazing, it was written by a fella called SLOTHFELLA. The music is fast-paced electronic music with a hint of futuristic sounds. I'm a big fan of it as it really fits the gameplay and especially the graphics. It's a shame there isn't a soundtrack DLC available on Steam.

Above, I talked a bit about how I needed some time to get used to the controls. At first, they are really counterintuitive, so I wish there was an option to switch the left and right key. The up and down arrows to move towards and away from the center are fine as they are quite obvious.

I'm also quite surprised that this game lacks a proper options menu. Personally, I know that Alt+Enter switches between windowed and fullscreen mode, but not a lot of people know that. If you want to change the music volume, you first have to start a game and then use the pause menu to change the volume there (and that is a really important thing to do because the music is unusually loud in this game). Another challenge for the player is to find out how to enter the pause menu at all. When I tried to do that for the first time, I was really shocked when I discovered that the Escape key doesn't do a thing is this game. Who thought this would be a good idea? After pressing a bunch of keys and giving up, I pressed Alt+F4 to close the game. Then, I reopened it and checked out the tutorial to see how to do that. Apparently, it was the P key I needed to press.

The problem with keybinds doesn't end there. The game makes absolutely no effort in explaining how to let a second player join the multiplayer game on the same keyboard. Me and my brother wanted to play on the same keyboard and we needed to press all of the most common keys to figure out which one lets the second player join. The last time we had to do that was when fifteen years ago when none of us spoke English and we couldn't understand what the instructions were saying. This time, there weren't any instructions at all.

Apart from that, there isn't much to tell about this game. It does have achievements, which is nice. I wish there was an online multiplayer mode, it would've been really neat to play this with my online friends.


Although this game suffers from of a certain amount of bad design decisions (weird keybinds, no options menu, insufficient tutorial), I found the game really enjoyable. I had a lot of time playing the game once I figured out how to actually play properly. There is certainly a lack of additional content in terms of unlockable skins, maps, game modes and other things. I think that $4 is quite an appropriate price for a game like this and I wouldn't mind them bumping it up for an additional dollar if they fixed all the flaws of this game and maybe even added the online multiplayer mode.

With love,
BirdCute

Note that my copy of this game was obtained for free for reviewing purposes. However, this did not affect the quality and objectivity of the reviewing process.