Recent reviews by TomFaux

As someone that doesn't really enjoy fighting games or taking the time to practice, practice, practice, YOMIH is super fun. It's way more about the psychological warfare of trying to read your opponent's mind. No frame perfect reactions, no quarter circle turns, no lag.

You get to pull off crazy combos by playing your opponent, and the end result of the fight is so satisfying that you don't even mind when you lose. You can play one match and be satisfied or play seven in a row.

For such a low price tag, I'd highly recommend.

Tinykin is a 3d platformer, collectathon more than anything else.

I had a the pleasure of playing Splasher earlier this year, and now Tinykin, I'm now very excited for anything Splashteam puts out in the future.

The obvious comparison is Pikmin, and there are a lot of similarities, but tonally, it's very different. There is no challenge, no time limit, no dying, no messing up, nothing. You get more and more Tinykin, and they'll be your best bud forever. Each level adds a new mechanic, movement feels good, and the world is very imaginative (Honey I Shrunk the Kids-esque). I think the game is very satisfying to play, feels good to grow in size and collect varying items.

I only negative I really have to say is if you're going for 100%. There's basically coins around the map, and there's achievements to get every coin on every level. I basically ended every level missing 6 - 100 coins and there's no help to find them. So you'll wander around the map until you find the last few. It's not *as* bad as other games, because the levels are fairly open so obviously missed coins can be found by scouting up high, and the hidden ones are probably near other bigger collectibles, so if you're missing an envelope or quest item, the last few coins will probably be found along with it.

Overall, I would definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys old school 3D platformers, collectathons, or Pikmin enjoyers who want to avoid the stress.

Classic indie game. Fun ideas, cool to see someone making something, but ultimately it ends there. If I made this, I'd be really proud. A lot of work went in and it's fun to play for a bit.

In terms of buying and finishing the game, there is just way too much going against it.
If I can die in under a second on harder levels, it should not take longer than a second to try again.
"Sprinting" should not be automatic after moving for X amount of time.
The wall jumping is interesting, but super counter intuitive. Why can I wall jump off of nothing after wall jumping once?

Personally, I hate the sprinting mechanic. Let me fully control it or remove it.
Reduce the respawn time.

If you fix both of those things, I think this game would actually be really solid. But how it is, I'd spend more time waiting on respawns and platforms than actually playing.

Really did not live up to expectations. It's been a while now since I played New Order and Old Blood, but this game just feels worse in every way. Which is a shame because it seems to have a passionate team behind it and a lot of good things going for it.

- Characters return and are good/fun
- Graphics look solid
- Detailed cut scenes with little details that are appreciated

Unfortunately, in terms of a *game,* it comes up pretty short. Level design is horrid, levels are short, mechanics are introduced and immediately dropped only allowing shallow interactions, movement feels bad, shooting feels bad, enemies are repetitive and their AI is bad, difficulty curves are all over, final boss fight is underwhelming and frustrating... I could go on.

It really feels like if you're looking for Wolfenstein, go back and play New Order or Old Blood again.
If you're looking for something fast, go to Doom
If you're looking for something technical, go to Deathloop
If you're looking for something narrative, go to Metro

I really enjoyed my first route to Road 96. Then I enjoyed the second route a little less. And by route number seven, the game had sabotaged itself into being terrible.

For the game marketing itself as procedurally generated, it's really on rails. The only stuff that feels procedurally generated is the voice lines and animation because wow, they are not good. From mispronunciations to subtitle typos to timing, it feels like AI generated audio. Characters start strong with fairly exaggerated personalities, only for them to all collapse into a ball of "we are human after all," something out of a Hallmark or Netflix romcom original.

The story is linear, your choices in sequences don't matter, and the story had me rolling my eyes. A shame because I've heard great things, and the first run had hooked me in. Thankfully, it's short so I can finish and move on.

A game so artificially focused on creating a speedrun / god mode experience that it doesn't stop to think what it's actually asking the player to do.

The game feels awful. Not because it's sluggish or floaty, but because it doesn't know how to teach the player. Tutorials were often worded poorly and vaguely, resulting in me actually looking up guides for the tutorial levels. You don't dodge bullets by "moving randomly." I can certainly press WASD randomly and that won't help me dodge bullets.

"Press Q to enter blink mode. Try to aim at all enemies then M1 to blink through all enemies." Okay, but you don't give me additional blink time to figure it out. It's 0.5 seconds to aim at all enemies. That's normally fine, but the three enemies are in a triangle formation. It's literally impossible to "aim" at all of them at the same time. And now that it's not clear, you only have 0.5 seconds during blink mode duration to figure it out, then you're waiting 3 seconds for the cooldown. IN THE TUTORIAL. And when they said "aim at all enemies," they mean aim at the one in the back, and nearby enemies will also be targeted automatically. Then your first level back in after the tutorial, they don't even give you blink mode charge, so I immediately died trying to use the feature they just gave me.

The "dodging" and "ninja" skills feel so artificial too. My entire experience is pressing shift to slow down the game, weirdly mid-air strafe left of the bullet, then lunge and swing. But don't press shift without jumping because that only dashes, it doesn't slow down time. So, even if you're on flat ground, it's jump for no reason. Shift. Hold left until bullet is shot and past you. Then dash and swing. Surely there's movement abilities? Yeah, grapples. Grapples everywhere. Grapple once and get ready to scan your entire screen for the next grapple point because that's all it is. Wall running is pointless if you're gonna have me run on a wall just for me to not be able to make the jump, so you give me another grapple hook. It doesn't feel bad, but it doesn't feel good either. And it's certainly not fun to grapple, grapple, grapple, grapple, and now I'm in the arena. JUST GET ME IN THERE.

I hate giving negative reviews when I don't even have an hour in the game, but wow I hated this experience.
Say skill diff all you want, these aren't skills I want.

https://youtu.be/j1YxwoZVm2A

Mad Tracks is a micro machines racing game from 2006, and it plays like one.
Graphics are rough, difficulty settings are whack, mechanics are not fleshed out.

HOWEVER, with all that said, it's a pretty fun party game (especially for solo play). Besides traditional racing, there's time trials, elimation, control point, hill climb, collectathon, soccer, foosball, billiards, and a ton others. It keeps the variety up for basically every event. Yes, some are just bad. Yes, some are dirt easy. Yes, some are incredibly difficult to get gold medals.

Remember, it is a micro machine game. You have to be a child or a brain off adult, and I am a brain off adult. It's (mostly) relaxing, simple and you can watch a movie while playing. You can do this with other (better) racing games too, but for the variety and the price, this one is hard to beat.

P.S. If that doesn't sound fun or you're looking for a challenge, you'll hate this game lol

Video: https://youtu.be/6DQvW484IfE

A Normal Lost Phone is a mobile game that was released the same day on Steam. UI is a bit whack with it only ever being the vertical phone screen, but it works fine.

It's a very casual game, focused on story and characters, with like... 5 puzzles throughout the game.
The game is basically an interactive novel, which is fine. Just know that going in.

The story focuses on LGBT topics throughout the game, but it handles them well.
There is one section of the game that is basically educating the player on some LGBT topics, which fits the game, but from a video game standpoint, it's a bit dry.

Overall, would recommend it to anyone looking for a short (1 hour) narrative experience or someone looking for an LGBT-focused narrative.

Video: https://youtu.be/zOkr1hXnFlI

Shape of the World is a walking simulator in a semi-trippy environment. There's a lot to like, from the swapping color palettes, lively creatures, and a pacing you decide. I'm not one to destress on a video game like this, so I didn't treat it as one. I basically went as fast as possible, focusing on achievements, and still found things to enjoy.

While it's main intention is escapism and relaxation, some of the color palettes are eye burningly bad. Whether it's too bright, too dark or too clashing, I did have to adjust settings a few times (which isn't really relaxing).
I also had a glitch occur where the main, required object never spawned and I had to reload.

All that aside, the game is what it is. I enjoyed my time, especially for achievement hunting, but I could see people wanting more.

Video: https://youtu.be/211YcbkXRDk

Really fun idea, especially an interesting way to play Bomberman single-player. I was definitely able to find enjoyment, although I'm not sure how much it's one you'd replay after beating the boss since there's only so much variety in a build, and achievements seem more annoying/tedious than fun.

The start of every run, in the beginning, is more rough than fun, with your bomb explosion being 1x1. This works fine in Bomberman when it's blocks that drop upgrades, but in this game, it's walking enemies that drop the goods. So you place a bomb behind them, and they simply keep walking away and avoid the explosion. You can't get upgrades from the blocks, so you have to predict and manipulate the enemy AI in a frustrating way.

Thankfully, once you unlock some upgrades from the rogue-lite side of things, runs start way better and you can pick up speed quickly. Pretty good boss variety for what the game is, and there are a decent amount of creative items, it's just you won't see a lot of them in a run and there's not really a way to manipulate that. You want all three boot upgrades in one run? Too bad, you explored every room and got to the final boss without ever seeing them.

All in all: Cool idea, I'd love to see a sequel, fun to beat, but has it's limits.