Recent reviews by Robin Lionheart

Despite ending support for the game, they issued a final patch unlocking all the cards and leaving it in a state where you could continue to play all the solo content. I respect that they didn't leave customers high and dry, but left us with something we could continue to play with.

Great slasher movie trimmings add hearseloads of style to what's at base a sliding block puzzle.

Some later puzzles are paywalled, but has replay value even after you've solved all the free puzzles with a daily free puzzle to do.

Has gameplay similar to Colbiri Games's very good The Tiny Bang Story, another artistic puzzle game where you can gather collectibles hidden in plain sight once you learn what you need them for. Free download provides Part 1, which took under an hour to complete, and basically serves as a demo for the full game, sold as a DLC.

The screenshots above will give you a sample of its brightly grungy art style. I liked its nifty hint system gated behind a different puzzle to point you to collectibles you've missed.

The only downside for me was that I found its puzzles too easy, but I enjoyed passing an hour with it.

Excellent! A tightly screenwritten short that brilliantly captures the game's atmosphere. Makes me want to play the game again, with that orchestral score in my head.

A tight, suspenseful little first-person graphic adventure short story. Kept me occupied for an hour. Generous with alternate puzzle solutions.

A pretty, pleasant puzzler marred by ugly, obscene achievement spam. If not for its nasty achievements, I'd give this game an enthusiastic recommendation.

No instructions, but it's easy to figure out. Draw lines dot-to-dot connecting same colored circles in a grid, leaving no dot out. I like it when tricky puzzles emerge from simple rules. Lines Free is like a demo version with half as many puzzles.

It's a relaxing and not overly taxing mental exercise, easy on the eyes and ears, with soft backgrounds and soothing music. So long as you leave it in full-screen mode, which hides its achievement notifications.

However, if you switch to windowed, your otherwise tranquil experience will be marred by achievement spam. Each level awards several achievements, starting tamely enough with letters of the alphabet, then moving on to random words. No doubt they're for assembling words and phrases on your Steam profile like refrigerator magnets.

Its word achievements get particularly obnoxious when they get to censored words like F*CK, SH*T, and B*TCH, and uncensored words with obscene connotations. It's like an otherwise gentle, calming game suddenly starts swearing at you. A damn shame, since it makes an otherwise delightful puzzler unsuitable for children.

Instead of Lines, I recommend its more challenging sequel Lines Infinite. Not only because Nestor kept Infinite's achievement spam decent, sticking to alphabet blocks, but also because Infinite includes a random level generator, retaining replayability once you've solved all its designed puzzles.

Shanghai solitaire on a timer, with the common freemium model of limited, slowly replenishing energy that you can buy refreshes of. You can obtain (or pay money for) helpful items like hint bugs that fly around matches for you, hourglasses that give you more time, and magnetic dust that reshuffles the tiles, but no undoes.

Almost identifcal to their Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure, except its hidden object levels have been replaced by Shanghai solitaire levels. Same story, same graphics, same music, same quests. If you've played one, you've essentially played them both.

So how's its solitaire? It assumes you know how to play Shanghai solitaire; no instructions are available. Its Shanghai solitaire levels choose a random formation from a wide variety of layouts. Uses traditional mah jongg tile designs with Chinese numbers and season names, with no alternate tile sets. Wrong moves can render your level unwinnable, which you may not discover for minutes, playing until the game acknowledges you have no moves left and gives you the option to buy a reshuffle or start over (if you have enough energy). Its reshuffles apparently don't ensure the new board is solvable: I've used a reshuffle, played the only four moves I saw, then had the game again declare no moves left and offer to sell me another reshuffle.

While other players may not mind the countdown timer, personally, I hate playing Shanghai for speed with no undoes when I make a hasty mistake. If you too would like variant tile sets and undoes, there are many inexpensive non-free alternatives on Steam.

Me, I'd play Lost Lands's hidden-object version over this one. Things I like about this game, like some of its music (at least, the tracks that aren't trying to manufacture tension), its decent graphics, and its treasure chest puzzles, were all taken from that one, anyway. But if you want a quick fix of Shanghai solitaire without cheaty undoes, that cuts you off after a few rounds till your energy bar refills, this game'll give that to you for free.

A satisfying and free puzzle game. A pleasant and not too taxing mental exercise, easy on the eyes and ears, with soft backgrounds and relaxing music.

No instructions, but it's easy to figure out. Draw lines dot-to-dot connecting same colored circles in a grid, leaving no dot out. I like it when tricky puzzles emerge from simple rules.

Playing full screen hides its achievement notifications, so I didn't realize until I exited that it had awarded me hundreds of achievements. Each level awards several achievements containing random words. I presume they're for assembling phrases on your Steam profile like refrigerator magnets. No doubt some would consider that a feature. Since it was unobtrusive, it didn't detract from the experience for me, but it could've gotten annoying playing windowed. So I recommend leaving the game full screen to keep its achievement spam hidden.

Things never go quite to plan in a heist story, do they?

A free, comedic 20 minute romp directed by William Pugh (The Stanley Parable). It's a brief piece of linear, puzzle-less interactive fiction. This is the sort of game you should play without foreknowledge or information beyond what's in the title. I'd be doing you a disservice to spoil its surprises.

But if you enjoyed _The Stanley Parable_, you'll probably enjoy this experience too.

Nice bonus soundtrack album. Unfortuately, for a Steam DLC, it's a shame that it doesn't register itself with Steam's music player. Instead it seems to merely add a Soundtrack folder of MP3s to the game directory. But it's an interesting and varied soundtrack.