Recent reviews by Stag

Its Metroid, with a little bit of Super Meat Boy platforming, only you play as a cat in a mech suit. Its a fun 4-ish hour blast from the past! For 2$ on sale I have nothing to complain about (and probably wouldnt at full price either).

Im glad they added Mrs Chalice to the game. Im gonna need something to hold all my tears of rage and joy.

My new favorite "Binding of Isaac"!

Youll love it!
Youll hate it!
Youll keep coming back for more punishment!

...and THAT is what makes a game great.

Looks nice. Still feels like youre piloting a semi truck through a hallway.

This is the "Mighty No. 9" that I was looking for.

Its a short game that isnt all that difficult, but its mechanics are fun enough. Its a complete game as it is but it almost feels like a 'first draft', something experimental which will be expanded upon in future versions....mainly because its such a short run (my first playthrough clocked in at 1:10:15, and the game even has an achievement for beating it in under 20 minutes...). If this were fleshed out into say, a 10-hour campaign with more items, enemies, areas/planets and space battles, I would certainly be interested in getting a copy. This game is a tease, by the time you get into it its over.... but its still amusing, especially for the $0.99 asking price.

EDIT 8/4/18

This is it, the Chrono Trigger we deserved from the start on Steam. Squeenix listened to their fans and fixed the majority of the issues, so aside from a 5MB SNES cart now being well over a GIG in size to download, or a minor FMV missing here and there... this is the port weve been looking for, and as a veteran of the game since it came out in 1995 I couldnt be happier (well, maybe if they fixed their half assed FF ports next).

Forget Octopath, NNK2 and DQ11.... pick this bad boy up and blow yourself away with how great a 23 year old game can be (especially now that IT WORKS)!

Its fun, one of those types of games that you can turn on at any point, sink 15-30 minutes into it and be done with it for a few days. That is to say, its good, but there are lots of better games in your inventory that you probably havent even played yet. Downwell reminds me somewhat of "Super House of Dead Ninjas"- it plays fast, its downward-focused, most enemies only take one hit to dispatch (when you bounce off them anyway)....and a game can be over real quickly if you arent careful. Worth the full $3 asking price? Sure... but its really nothing Id go out of my way to buy unless it went on sale. I got it for $1.01 after Steam notified me. For that price, you can hardly go wrong with ANY game.....

I went in hopeful, and came out uninstalling. 45 minutes of wandering around a big empty hallway loaded with locked doors. The 'jump scares' didnt make me jump, the VA work was flat, and the 'atmosphere' was non existant after the first few minutes as every room looks exactly the same from the second you begin. First impression: "Creepy-neat!" 30 minutes later: "wheres that last F'n trinket at so I can put it on the pedestal and be done with this boring slog?"

Theres a Chapter 2 and 3, but even if they are free like this one was, I have no interest in playing further. Glad it WAS free, at least theres that.

Take 2 parts Contra, mix with one part Gradius, wrap in a hand-animated 1930s cartoon, and top it with an amazing era-authentic jazz-inspired soundtrack, and youve got the recipe for a GREAT game. My thumbs havent hurt so much since Super Meat Boy, I havent found myself humming game music like this in ages, and I cant get enough. An immense amount of care and detail was put into this game and it shows, from the title screen onwards. A MUST if you are a fan of hard-as-nails platform shooters, or art in general. Wheres the sequel...? SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!!

*EDIT 11/26/17*
100%'d the achievements. Lookin forward to some DLC or a sequel~!