Recent reviews by spaceboyzoom

unless you're really lucky first time through, some of your runs/resets will likely be useless. you have to spend relatively properly to make progress. personally, I find that more annoying than rewarding, but I'm obviously in the minority

It's great for the low price it often goes on sale for. Wild west theme is great for an x-com clone. But the game feels kinda slow and clunky, too. The luck mechanic makes fights last longer than they should, which is both good and bad. Fewer random deaths to a bad shot for your guys, but also the fights feel like they drag on too long because it takes too long to burn down the enemy luck, get a hit, then burn down the luck again, then get another hit. It's a little tedious. Thumbs up at the sale price of $2.

I got stuck and finally resorted to looking at a guide. First thing I see is that the game is prone to soft locking at this point. Don't waste your time or money. Just watch a playthrough. Game isn't that good anyway.

As an interactive artwork (where you're not trying to 'win'), I'd give it a thumbs up. Interesting concept and commentary, good voice work.
But as a game, no. All the same minor annoyances as the first game (arbitrary nonsensical distinctions between which information is considered important/new and which is not), but magnified by a couple of new problems from the new feature designed to put some "time" pressure on you.
The first game felt like you were putting good data in, and keeping bad data out. This time because of "time" pressure, it just feels like you should intentionally do a crappy investigation job on purpose so you can get done faster.
On top of that, for part of the game you're trying to fit your investigation steps in before a certain in-game time when XYZ happens, and then for a later part of the game, as soon as you collect the bare minimum of information, XYZ happens instantly, but they say "that's okay, just take your time".
It's a little more annoying than the first one, and a little less fun, but also a little more topical to current events.

Hexcells was great for the challenge, this game is great for the chill. Both are hexagonal versions of minesweeper, but without the guessing. Hexcells feels more like expert minesweeper with the tension of something like Jenga. This game is more like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.
As much as I loved Hexcells, it was always hard to remember the "rules" of it after a break. This game is much more intuitive, you can figure out the rule of the given clue just by pressing and holding. 'Mistakes' are even forgiven in this game (but still kept track of), so you can just keep chilling and playing, you don't have to start over after a mistake unless you want to. So chill.

Crashes at least once per hour on win 10 with an amd ryzen 5600x and an xfx radeon 570. The game is cheap now, but still not enough for me to give it a thumbs up when it crashes this much. Better off skipping to 4 instead.

starts out kinda fun, but too slow and repetitive too early, and requiring too much babysitting. all idle games have slow and repetitive in them, but with more interesting changes interspersed. this game has too few interesting parts early on, and requires you to come in to buy levels too often while giving you not enough interesting things to do or see in exchange. the ratios and timeframes are just off. I have 19 hours in, but have only received about 4 hours of entertainment value.

for reference, my fav idle games are CotLI and Soda Dungeon, so if you disagree with those picks, maybe you'll disagree about this game, too.

Way overhyped. Way too many positive reviews saying it's the best puzzle game ever without acknowledging its faults. Read one of the longer reviews before jumping in blindly, because I love puzzle games but despise this one (to be fair, that's probably because of all the hype it got, and my ensuing disappointment). Don't just believe them automatically when they say "it treats your time as precious". I find it to be the opposite. Also, the puzzles all share a common mechanic, so you should probably look that up before buying.

The rewind system and the interest income together are what set this game apart the most. Instead of memorizing the enemy waves to make sure you don't buy the wrong thing at the wrong time, you just go ahead and play, and rewind if you mess up, instead of having to start all over. But you can't just back up and then go all in buying the towers for the next wave, because you need to save enough money to earn more interest for the later levels. It's a constant balancing act, that would be too tedious if you always had to start over.

On top of that, the aliens aren't just coming to do damage, they're stealing energy cores, so they enter, pick up, and leave. If you kill one on the way out, the energy core gets dropped and slowly starts traveling back toward your "base". But if another alien is in the vicinity, even if it just entered and is still at full health, it'll pick up the core and turn around to leave right away.

Nice voiceover work and a fun cameo in the You Monster DLC, too.