Recent reviews by flesk

Fantastic puzzler, and much more difficult than its predecessor. Don't let the achievement stats fool you: until a guide was published, less than 0.5% of players even had the achievement for solving 30 of the 60 puzzles in the game. I do recommend solving the puzzles on your own though, even if, as me, you'll end up stumped for hours on some of the puzzles. It will make finishing the game that much more rewarding.

A bit on the short side, but a fun concept. The levels up until 19 are fairly straightforward; then the difficulty ramps up quite a bit throughout the last 11 levels. It doesn't take more than a couple of hours to complete though, and I think it would have been a better game with a bit more content.

Corey's Crate Move, *ehm* Bonfire Peaks, is an excellent puzzle game in the same vein as the much loved Stephen's Sausage Roll. What immediately sets this game apart from most other sokoban-likes is how well the three-dimensionality of it is put to use in creating clever, and sometimes fiendishly difficult, puzzles where you need to master the verticality and physics of the game world.

The goal of each level is to burn a crate of your belongings in a bonfire, and doing so requires you to master increasingly more intricate mechanics, as you progress through new and thematically different areas of the game world.

Thankfully, you're not required to solve every puzzle in the game on your way through it, as there's usually a bunch of different puzzles to choose from; some of them cleverly hidden away from the main path. This prevents the game from feeling frustrating when you get stuck on one of the many particularly difficult puzzles.

The game also works flawlessly on Linux, and is an easy recommendation for any puzzle fan.

An expertly designed log pushing puzzler featuring the monster protagonist from one of my favourite puzzlers, A Good Snowman is Hard to Build. One of my most anticipated games of the year, but also one I'd lost hope I'd be able to play when an issue with the FMOD plugin in Unity prevented the Linux version from being released. Therefore, I was very surprised, and extremely excited when I was asked to test a Linux build in mid November.

This game is everything I'd hoped it would be. There's a huge world of islands to puzzle your way through, and many more hours of puzzles and exploration if you want to find everything. This exploration aspect is something I really love in a puzzle game, though it's not something I come across often, so I appreciate it all the more when it's done as well as in this game.

The basic puzzle mechanic is to tip over trees to create logs, which you navigate into place to create bridges between islands. Logs come in two lengths; short ones, which you can flip lengthwise, and long ones which you can only push. Both kinds can be rolled, and will keep rolling until they reach an obstacle, like rocks or tree stumps, or fall into water. Occasionally, you're able to make rafts, which can take you a long way across the ocean, until you land on a new group of islands.

To get through the game, you will travel between many of these groups of islands, which all have slightly different themes, and sometimes introduce new mechanics. It's not always obvious how to progress, bu thankfully, the map offers hints in the form of a footstep marker, which will show you which island you should focus your attention on. And if you find yourself stuck at any point, you can always go back to the nearest mailbox to instantly travel to a previously visited section of the map, and try to unlock an undiscovered area.

It's possible to play the game with a mouse or gamepad, but I found it very comfortable to play with just a keyboard. I got the game free on Steam for testing purposes, but I ended up "double dipping" on Itch.io, because I'm very happy to be able to play this game naively on Linux.

Spiritfarer is a story-heavy resource management platformer, and quite unlike anything I've played before. Your task, as the Spiritfarer, is to find and care for spirits and guide them into the afterlife.

To accommodate the needs of your spirit guests, you need to give them a place to live, food (and hugs), and fulfil various other needs. This requires a fair bit of resource gathering and processing, which means you'll need to build out your ship with new structures, acquire new skills, and perform many different activities like farming, cooking and sawing.

You won't be able to do everything at first, but as you get new spirits aboard your ship, you will receive quests which lead you around the map to unlock new abilities, find new resources, and unlock blueprints for building. There are also several platforming challenges on the islands you visit, and you need to improve your platforming gradually by unlocking new abilities at certain shrines.

These gameplay mechanics are fun for the most part, but they can get a bit tedious eventually. Where the game really shines though, is in the story department, where it delivers credible characters with varied backstories, unique personalities, and great emotional depth. I was surprised by how much I came to care for most of my spirit guests, and how bittersweet it felt to eventually release them into the afterlife.

Even months after finishing the game, I still sometimes think about it with nostalgia, and especially miss my spirit friend Atul.

The newest real-time tactics game from Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun developer, Mimimi Games, and a new installment in the classic RTT franchise Desperados. Aside from a short attempt at playing the original Desperados games after finishing Blades of the Shogun this summer, I have no previous experience with the franchise. I've become a big fan of Mimimi's approach to the genre though, with their tight level design, modern gameplay and great accessibility options.

In this game, you control five different characters, who all have their unique skills. Usually, you will only be able to control a few of them at a time, so you will have to adapt to new limitations throughout the game. As you progress though the game, you also unlock bonus chapters, which are "remixes" of levels you encounter in the main game, but with new characters and goals. These don't have any bearing on the story, so they are sometimes a bit silly, but fun nevertheless.

There are four difficulty options to choose from, which should make it possible to play and enjoy this game, whether you're completely new to the genre, or a hardened veteran. I played through the game on the Normal difficulty, and found it perfect for me, as it gave me a good challenge, but never became too frustrating. Even on Normal, it's rarely a good strategy to charge into confrontations guns blazing, but rather take your time and pick your enemy's defenses apart.

This gives the genre a slight puzzle-esque feeling, a bit like a game of Jenga, where you have to consider your every move, or else risk have everything come tumbling down when you trigger an alarm. Thankfully, there are quick saves, so there's little penalty in just saving your progress before trying out a strategy which may or may not work. And when it doesn't, you can just load your progress from any of your last three quick saves.

What's new in this game from the developer's previous game, is the showdown mode, which pauses the game and lets you assign actions to each of your characters, which makes it possible to pull off difficult coordinated attacks. There's also a new level summary map, which plays through the movements of the enemy and your characters after finishing a level.

I enjoyed every minute of this game, and I eagerly await Mimimi's next RTT game, which will be an original intellectual property, and their first self-published game.

An exceptionally well-designed and difficult sokoban-esque puzzler, where you solve levels by grilling sausages. Sausages take up two tiles, and they must be grilled on both sides to pass a level, but only once on any part of the sausage, otherwise it burns, and you must undo your last step or restart. This gets challenging fast, and in later levels, the overworld also plays into individual levels.

Since this is a 3D puzzle game, it allows for some surprising, and interesting mechanics you haven't seen in other games of this genre, which are introduced as you pass through the different areas of the game. I recommend trying this game for yourself, as the trailer doesn't do it justice, and if it's not to your tastes, there's always the option of getting a refund.

I have not experienced any problems while playing this game on Linux, except getting stuck on particularly devious puzzles for hours.

Although I'm not 100% sure I understand the mechanics, I completed this game, and thought it was a fun, challenging and atmospheric experience. The goal is simple; get all of the flowers to bloom at once. You achieve this by lowering tiles to direct the flow of water, and as far as I understand, you can only lower tiles which are in or next to water, but only within one level above the surface of the water. Don't quote me on that though, and either way, it's not important, since movable tiles are clearly marked, you can easily undo moves, and you will find yourself experimenting either way, to see what happens when you do what. It's perhaps not an overly "thinky" puzzle game, but I enjoyed it a lot, nevertheless, and it worked without issues for me on Linux.

I got hooked on the concept from reading about the game and watching the trailer, but unfortunately, I did not enjoy playing the game. I like that you can peek into a different time period from the one you're in, as a way to scout out dangers, but in practice this doesn't always work well, as some dangers move quickly, and it also means that making a full switch often takes too long to be able to react quickly when you do wind up in immediate danger.

There have also been several chase sequences, and other situations requiring quick reactions during the short time I've played this game. These have been nothing but frustrating to me since the game character moves so sluggishly, and the margin of error is often so small, that I wound up dying multiple times, and had to repeat the same excruciating sequences.

The puzzles I've encountered so far have mostly been about bringing one specific item from one place to another. I've reached a point in the game where I need to solve some clues to combine the right items, which might be a good puzzle, but since I lost interest in the game, I may never know.

A big step up from the first SteamWorld Dig, which was already a very fun game. Unlike its predecessor, which had a randomly generated world (except the puzzle rooms), this game has a huge, fully designed game world, filled with enemy encounters, puzzles, and lots of secrets. The game follows the familiar formula of digging out treasure to sell, and earn money to buy upgrades, which enables you to dig deeper and explore new areas. Some upgrades are locked away behind difficult challenges, and others require collectible cogs, which can be distributed freely for a bit of customization to your gameplay.

The story ties into the SteamWorld universe, and follows the side-character Dorothy from the previous SteamWorld Dig game. It might therefore be a good idea to have played the first game, if you want to dig into the lore of the games. However, I think the game can be enjoyed on its own as well, since I enjoyed the story a lot without remembering much of the first game.

As usual, the SteamWorld games work great on Linux, and I hope to see another Dig game, as these are my favorites of the SteamWorld series.