Recent reviews by squashmonster

The art in the diplomacy screens of this thing is incredible.

Unfortunately I felt like the strategy mostly devolved into a simple exponential maximization thing, where the higher number wins (and kind of slowly and awkwardly).

The game is set up in a way that makes it unclear whether it's supposed to be based on a grind or based on skill. I think it's actually supposed to come down on the side of skill, but the game doesn't convey this to you very well.

Unfortuantely the controls are really bland - everything feels like it has no weight. It's skill-based, but I can't imagine wanting to spend the time to become skilled at this. And the enemy design is incredibly, incredibly dull. There's nothing to learn except what the jump scares look like.

I'm going through all the random games I've played and reviewing them and I can barely remember anything about this other than it being exceedingly dull.

I'm sorry that's unhelpful. But it's probably illustrative.

It's like Portal but without a soul and the gimmick mostly just lets you move blocks around like a finicky version of The Adventures of Lolo.

I don't know how people got so caught up in the world's clunkiest version of a 3D Zelda game.

The indie press kind of exploded when this game came out, yeah?

It's good fun, and makes interesting artistic decisions everywhere, which pretty much all pan out. I even enjoyed the subtext of the plot, which is rare in this world where every game with any aspirations of being artistic beats you over the head with disjointed symbolism.

Part of why this game made such a splash is that it takes its low budget limitations on its own terms and does impressive things that are actually cheap. That's a big deal if you're an aspiring indie developer. That's probably irrelevant to you, but they're all flipping out because it all works even if you're not an aspiring indie developer.

So yeah, it's good. Play it.

It's a hard platformer with a cute gimmick.

We could probably find a dozen equally good but lesser-known platformers. It's not quite as good as Escape Goat, and who's even heard of that game?

You can do better, but it's still good.

It's not as good as Bastion.

Isn't that a horrible standard to hold a game up to?

The combat system is interesting but entirely breakable. The appeal of being given the option to completely break the game will determine a lot of your enjoyment for that aspect. The enemy design is brilliant. The plot is weak - it juggles several parallel threads competently, but those threads don't work particularly well in the same story as each other. The characterization is fantastic. The art is gorgeous, the music is merely good.

Despite my littany of aspects that worked better than other aspects, the game doesn't feel uneven or anything. It's all quite good, it's just not transcendent or anything.

This game has very hard platforming (comparable to Super Meat Boy, maybe a hair harder) mixed with fairly difficult puzzles in a way that makes it sometimes hard to tell whether the solution is to be ridiculously good at platforming or if you're missing something. Sometimes those aspects play off each other in a way that's, at times, sublime. But it'll be a frustrating mess if you're not comfortable with either half of what makes it up.

This is pretty far from universally accessible, is what I'm saying. It's a game with prerequisites.

It's very good if you've taken the prerequisite courses, though.

Yeah of course Braid is good.

The attempts to be a higher art form by making the plot confusing didn't really pan out. Yes I understood it, but it's still mostly philosophy salad.

The puzzles are excellent, though. And that's the point, isn't it? Also it's pretty. That's not the point, but it's nice sometimes.