Recent reviews by SilverEagleDev

The VRChat application itself is a simple and yet frustratingly under-developed product. Despite the project's popularity, it appears that VRC has not devoted nearly a proportional amount of time and resources to improving the experience or building a better, more usable product.

What's more, and what's far, far worse, is how VRC treats the vibrant community of modders and third-party developers who have popped up to build a better experience where VRC themselves were unable or unwilling to. They've not only taken a "zero-tolerance" approach to those mods being anywhere near their application--even though a vast majority of them exist to fix problems for their users and not to cause problems for other users--but they've gone above and beyond in punishing these developers, banning them from the VRC application as leverage to try to get them to remove their public, free and open-source GitHub repositories, even though the software they've written is often applicable to any Unity application, not just VRC, and absolutely none of VRC's intellectual property is used or abused in those repositories.

If the team at VRChat devoted even a fraction of the energy they use destroying their own modder and developer community to building a better application themselves, then "VRChat Plus" would be an easy sell and we'd spend all day in their worlds without a complaint in the world. Instead, they've made adversaries of their own biggest fans, and no company that operates like this should ever be rewarded with your business.

I've been playing Dicey Dungeons throughout its development, so I can already speak to a lot of its features even though it just made it out the door on Steam.

Honestly, this game oozes charm. Terry Cavanagh isn't known for producing just one specific type of game or another, but really it seems he churns out whatever he thinks will be the most fun to play. Dicey Dungeons is no exception.

While its most basic premise is just "roguelike Yahtzee", the joy in playing this game comes from the unique ways in which its characters differ, creating completely new ways of navigating what is basically the same dungeon with the same set of enemies. Combine this with a ton of polish in storytelling, adorable characters *and* enemies, and a soundtrack by Chipzel that (as all of her game soundtracks do) completely knocks it out of the park, and you have something that's fun to pick up and play over and over.

Eagle Island, as a game, OOZES charm. It's such a wonderfully polished, cute game to play, even if it's challenging enough to give you a push to do better the next run. The developer has very clearly poured their heart and soul into this game and it shows in every little detail, but perhaps my favorite level of attention to detail is in the accessibility settings. Almost every aspect of the game's play is customizable to ensure people of all abilities can enjoy the game. There are AAA titles coming out today that don't even care that much about accessibility, so to see it in an indie developer's FIRST game is astonishing and should definitely be noticed.

Nova Drift keeps me coming back for more. There's so much replayability in the form of new builds, new unlocks and new ways to play that it's already something exciting to just hop into and play a round of. As an early title there's definitely some room for "balancing" how the different powerups interact with one another, but all in all it was absolutely worth the price of admission.

There's nothing I can say about this game that hasn't already been said by a thousand other reviewers, but I echo the sentiment that this game is one of the most beautifully polished and all-around excellent games that has been made in the last decade. The puzzle portion is engaging, challenging and rewarding, the visuals are breathtaking, and wrapped around all of this is a heartstring-plucking story about loving one another even when there's seemingly nothing left in the world to love. :')

In writing a review of this game, I find myself in a real tough spot. There are two competing and equally reasonable viewpoints about this game, and I still don't know which side I find myself on even still.

On the one hand, this game is immensely polished in its graphics, gameplay, voicework and interface. If you read the comments from the team members who worked long nights for years building it, you really get a feel for the passion they put into the game and how much they cared about it all this time. For a freshman effort from an indie studio, this is an immensely impressive game, and I think our saturation with cheap AAA titles has led us to expect the world from these tiny teams.

On the other hand, I agree with many who say that the retail price seemed a little steep to me for a game with about 4 hours of total play time and not very much replayability. The storyline is quite linear, and while you can occasionally wander around off the beaten path, there isn't enough of that side material to justify playing the whole game through again.

So the question has to be, is this worth $15 or $20 or whatever to you?

If you're like me, without a reliable stream of income, it hurts the wallet a little more to think that I only got 4 good hours out of this, and I probably won't pick the game up again. Years of Steam sales and Humble Bundles have spoiled me by giving me dozens upon dozens of hours of replayable entertainment at pennies on the dollar. This game doesn't make that same value proposition, but once you realize that it's coming from an indie studio, it makes more sense why they're asking that amount for it. They've gotta keep the lights on, after all.

Consider it a compliment to the game and Campo Santo that it's so well-polished in so many respects that, at first, I assumed it was just pushed out by another big name publisher who wouldn't care about one refund in the big picture. You might get that feeling after playing it, too, but remember that this isn't a product put out by a giant, monolithic company, but rather a small and hard-working team of people. I wouldn't dare ask for a refund knowing that.

A very charming independent game with remarkable attention to detail, smooth playability, well-constructed soundtrack, and an all around excellent gaming experience.