Recent reviews by Mumra

An intriguing concept but ultimately flops at the execution. The underlying plot is both trite and delivered in the blandest way possible, A-list actors voicing an incoherent and soulless narrative. The twist ending is a flat souffle and doesn't even do us the mercy of actually ending the game.

The most FTL-like of all FTL-likes I've seen, which is not a bad thing. The atmosphere and story is great, and the mechanics feel tighter than FTL. Ship-to-ship combat is a bit more interesting, taking place on a tactical hex grid and focusing on squadron movements instead of crew. Music and audio is mostly great, although there isn't enough variation in the music to keep things interesting. The only other issue I found was random encounters started repeating A LOT in the later chapters and it's pretty slow and clunky skipping dialog.

The first half of the game introduces you to a great and interesting set of puzzle mechanics. Unforunately the second half of the game fails to build on this and layer up these elements to produce some really mind-bending challenges (as other games in this class such like Portal and Talos Principle do). Instead there are several levels of mostly walking simulator through environments that are just less interesting than the earlier levels, and a narration that takes forever to get to its point, although the writing is good. (Side note: I could have sworn the narrator was Limmy himself, turned out I was wrong though). I feel like they just ran out of time and/or puzzles, but while playing it just feels they forgot it was a puzzle game at some point. Still it is worth playing for earlier puzzles, but if the second half had landed properly this would have been easily up there with Portal.

Many improvements over the original, including a new cartoony art style instead of pixelart (and let's face it, that style has been overused about as often as politicians tell lies at this point) which even has 4k support. Combat has been revamped and streamlined and offers more tactical possibility. Adventures also have varied goals which really mixes things up and I can't wait to see how the system progresses. There is also more depth in the story-telling system overall allowing individual encounters to branch a bit with a bit more internal variation.

HOWEVER, I don't recommend buying this right now unless being an unpaid beta tester really does it for you. In its current form the game is chock full of bugs that have a high probability of ruining your campaign, the UI is clunky and missing a lot of very obvious quality-of-life improvements, and content is overall still pretty thin on the ground which, respite many encounters having a bit more branching, still results in a fairly repetitive and too-easy campaign (acts II and III literally have "PLACEHOLDER" as the mission name) especially if you played the first game a lot. I trust Machinen-Mensch to do a really job in the end tho, so add it to your list and come back in few months once Early Access has had time to mature.

Maybe it's just me but this game is awful;.

Played for the like the first hour and was bored out of my skull trying to deal with the awful UX to get past some walls.

Has anyone seen Half Life 3? Cos it's not here.

This is ropey as hell, terrible performance and bugs in my first 5 minutes,

Brilliant game! Seriously, this is as good as Cave Story. Amazing writing and art, and music is a solid 11. The environments are interesting and varied, with new mechanics being introduced throughout the entire game. Ninja mechanics are fluid and fun. And it doesn't hold its punches, some parts of the game are extremely challenging.

I only have a small number real complaints:

- Parts of the game are so hard they're incredibly annoying, primarily because checkpoints can sometimes be badly placed. It's not so fun having to fight through the same two easy rooms a few dozen times just to get to the really hard room that you keep dying on.

- There is a *lot* of backtracking featured later in the game. Would have been nice to have some way to mitigate this a little.

- Standard enemies start getting extremely repetitive after a while. Would have been nice to just mix things up a bit more.

Despite these issues, the game is just so good and the story so satisfying this is still a solid 10/10, and probably the best game of 2018.

It's the new game by the team behind FTL so you can expect a certain level of quality here. Great pixel art, awesome soundtrack, and really interesting game mechanics. Unfortunately if you're after another FTL, this isn't it. For me this doesn't have anything like the replayability of that classic, once I'd progressed through most of the 4 worlds and figured out strategies for most of the attacks I just wasn't compelled to keep playing, there just isn't much variation from one level to another. Maybe you can try out different combinations of the mechs but there also isn't a huge amount of game-changing upgrade progression available as you battle through the stages.

But, I have to give credit to the (once again) great writing, managing to actually evoke a convincing in-game justification for replaying over and over again, the explanation being multiple timestreams.

Still recommended, this studio is well worth giving your money to, I just hope their next game returns to more of the adventure feel of FTL.

+ Beautifully drawn and animated, and sound design.

- Unfortunately I was hoping for something more like Amanita Design in terms of gameplay, but this has almost no gameplay. I couldn't find my paperweight to hold down the D key so I stopped playing when my finger got tired.

- Exploring the subject of depression shouldn't mean boring your players to tears.

Verdict: 2/10

Not quite the bureaucracy-em-up that was Pope's last game (Papers Please), although the end objective is still filing your paperwork correctly. This developer has an unhealthy obsession with forms. Instead we have a delightful puzzle adventure sleuther set largely aboard an 1800s merchant vessel. Your task is to figure out what happened, piecing together the story through slices of time which are initially delivered non-linearly.

Sadly whilst there are some interesting uses of this mechanic to create twists and keep you on your toes, I feel it was under-utilised. The game led me to expect some big game-changing twist/reveal towards the end but it never really paid off and most stories had rather mundane outcomes. I also wish there was a little more exploration and hunting for items: most of the scenery is purely static. I also came out feeling like I hadn't solved *that* many puzzles - there's a lot of basic reasoning, observation and a little guesswork - only a handful of times was I really scratching my head.

Pros:

- Original story and gameplay ideas
- Different and very well executed presentation. Pope took a modern 3D renderer and dithered the output down to monochrome pixel art. The result reminds me a lot of early 3D engines on the ZX Spectrum, or even still artwork from 1980s graphical text adventures, except with full motion and freedom of movement.
- Competent voice acting. Extra important because the puzzles rely heavily on clues in the dialogue.
- A good 12 hours of gameplay. Don't believe my Steam hours - accidentally left it paused for a day

Cons:

- Little to no replay value. Par for the course with adventures of this kind, but I do not even feel like there are even any hidden details or secrets I could go back to hunt for - you will hear and see everything the game has to offer in just a single playthrough
- Under developed game mechanics