Recent reviews by Deergirl Gaming

honestly, while I had a lot of fun with bonelabs I would probably recommend waiting a few months for community content to come out, since I feel a good intended chunk of the content is meant to be that and not a lot of it will exist at launch.

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while the foundation of bonelabs is great, the issue mostly lies in the lack of base game content for the $40 price tag, with the story kind of just ending abruptly after 5-6 hours of playtime. you might like to do minigames after that, with enjoyable favorites such as fantasy arena returning as well as some addition ones like parkour, and there's always the completionist aspect of collecting all the orbs you'll need if you have an interest in the sandbox aspects.

in regards to story, i will admit i didn't really see the issue with finding the story mode... i actually kind of enjoyed how it was a discovery! i found it out without really playing many of the minigames, probably like two hours or less in with no guide. i feel the frustrating regarding that is definitely to do with how the game was advertised - a common theme on why people feel a bit underwhelmed by bonelabs.

in several aspects, bonelabs is an improvement on boneworks; also in several aspects, bonelabs is less refined. the devs might be patching some of the issues i have with the game, which will greatly aid in how enjoyable the game is.

climbing in bonelabs feels more accessible, but also feels more buggy with the player more easily able to get their limbs stuck in geometry, or railings can feel insurmountable in some areas.

there is a wider selection of guns and some of the popular mod features on boneworks like having a bolt release button and mag eject button for all weapons are now vanilla, but also holding the guns seems kind of awkward with the stock being a physical object that doesn't sit quite right, and the hand holding the receiver dictating almost the entire rotation of the gun.

while it's not really something you need to use, i had a lot of fun with the avatar tether. i don't feel like the developers used the avatars with their various strengths and weaknesses that well beyond that avatar's specific minigame, though. i would have liked to see more puzzles in the story levels that require you to swap between different forms instead of it being largely optional (i beat the rest of the game as a custom avatar i uploaded). i do think this will be something that the community will utilize in modded maps to great effect, though.

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modded content is likely to be a majority of the end game, and in my experience it's easy to get your own custom avatars into the game if you have a basic understanding of unity; same amount you would need to upload a vrchat avatar more or less. the creation of custom levels seems to be accessible as well, although i have yet to experiment too much with this.

i think the worrying issue for me with the lack of content and how the main game only really shows vague ideas of what you could do with all the systems present in bonelabs is that the game might not grasp enough people to have a healthy mod scene. i would really like to see custom levels, as i enjoyed many of the boneworks modded levels that existed! but... if the base game feels so divisive, how is it going to garner the interest for people to spend dozens upon dozens of hours creating their own levels, campaigns, and other types of mods?

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all in all though, bonelabs is a game with a lot of potential for post-launch support, but the double-edged sword is that most of it lies in the hands of the community. the result is that either the game will have years of support by the community with a plentiful amount of levels and custom campaigns to experience, or modding will feel as stagnant as it did in the original boneworks with only a handful of custom experiences with the majority just being ports of levels from other games.

while i feel like modding support was a communicated thing, i think the large issue comes from a miscommunication and overhype on what the game was intended to be. i think most people, including myself, were expecting another campaign-driven experience like boneworks, but bonelabs is mostly the campaign supplementing a sandbox and mod-oriented experience. i think most people were also expecting bonelabs to push boneworks much further than it did instead of being a refinement with a few additions.

i would likely suggest waiting to buy it until the mod community gets acquainted with the tools unless you were a huge boneworks fan that wants some more content to play through. i enjoyed the game overall, though.

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why would you add EAC - something that is complete garbage to begin with - to a social game. kernel level anti-cheat is invasive and absolutely disgusting.

it feels like the developers are being misleading and exaggerating about how much "security" was actually a problem. instead, this is just going to prevent players with disabilities from using things that should be in the game to begin.

as what happens time and time again with the implementation of these kinds of things: they are not stopping malicious players, they are mostly affecting players that just want to be accommodated and play the game like everyone should be able to.

UPDATE: they went through with in one day. i'll take that as purposeful negligence.
UPDATE II: some quality of life features have been readded, and i will give them credit for that much at least

I was considering buying this game for my S/O so that we might do puzzles together, but found out that the developer views our existences as fetishistic or political.

Information about this situation may be found in this post by XoeAllred. I thank her for sharing her experiences, as they greatly help in the safety and well being of the LGBTQ+ community and speak loudly enough that the team behind Tabletop Simulator may be held accountable for jeopardizing that safety and well being.

Regardless if Tabletop Simulator is a good game or not, I refuse to support a dev team that does not respect the existence of LGBTQ+ people such as myself, my S/O, and many others. There are much better, free, and non-discriminatory options for every single aspect of this game. An example of such an option is Screentop.gg. [screentop.gg]

Although the developers have made statements about this, I do not have the optimism to believe it's anything more than a "sorry that we got caught" type of response. Action was not taken until the developers received backlash. To me, it just appears as a PR attempt.

In order to earn our respect back, the developers of Tabletop Simulator will have to show genuine accountability and commitment to righting this - such as donations to LGBTQ+ charities, and better representation of us within the moderation and development teams.

To anyone seeing this - thank you for taking your time to read this.

wait, this isn't just a condo builder?!