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Word Factori presents a novel word building factory game where you manipulate the letter I' into more complex shapes and ultimately into other letters to build words. It's wrapped up in a clean minimalist style with some soothing lo-fi tracks. Sounds like fun, right?

Well, it is, for all of one hour. And then the novelty and charm wears thin and the pleasant façade peels away, the problems with the title rear their head, and the tedium sets in.

You start out playing a set of introductory levels, requiring you to produce some letters and really short words, and I'll note here that no knowledge of words is required in this game—it's not that kind of word game! Output words (what you're trying to build on a given level) are broken into nodes of each letter of the word, so "THE" becomes 'T', 'H', and 'E' nodes respectively, requiring you to supply the matching letter to each of these nodes (i.e. you create 'E's using your factories and then output those 'E's into the 'E' node of the solution).

It all starts with the letter 'I' hence the name Word Factori. There are various buildings you can use to manipulate the letter 'I' (this is an uppercase 'i'). You start out with the basic 'I' factory that just produces raw letter 'I's that are used to feed into other buildings or directly to any 'I' nodes in the output word. There is a 'bending' building that bends an input letter/shape into something else (for example, super minor spoiler, bending an 'I' creates the letter 'C'), three merge buildings that welds two, three, and four letters/shapes together respectively, a rotate left and rotate right factory (90°), and finally a horizontal and vertical flip factory.

So far, so fun. With a little bit of experimenting with the different factories, you'll acquire recipes for at least half the letters fairly easily. Almost all the letters have multiple recipes though; that is, different ways you can create them using the different factories mentioned above. There is even a recipe book to keep track of all the ways you've created each letter (as well as numbers and a limited set of punctuation marks which are sort of like 'bonus' characters). For the first few set of levels you play, the challenge is mostly in finding recipes for all the letters, and once you do, you have all the knowledge you need to make any word. This begs the question...what is the purpose of playing any further if you know how to create every letter already?

The game attempts to solve this problem by introducing challenge levels which start to appear more and more frequently as you progress through the levels. They are just like normal levels except they limit your use of certain factories, either setting a limit to how many of a particular type of factory you may use (e.g. "you can only use 2 rotate left factories on this level") or by completely restricting the use of a particular factory (e.g. "solve this level without any bend factories")—or some combination of these restrictions. This certainly keeps things interesting to begin with, and there were definitely a few times where I really had to scratch my head on how to come up with a particular letter (I do not like the letter 'S' anymore...I don't want to talk about it). This however is also the point where you start to realize one problem with this game and that's how any two people will have differing assumptions and interpretations of what output certain combinations of factories should create.

The biggest culprits for this problem are the merge and bend tools. There is no 'control' over where two shapes or letters get merged, it's predetermined by the developers. That is, the merging is based entirely on where they thought the two letters/shapes (or three/four if you're using the larger merge factories) should be joined. To wit (minor spoilers), one person may think that if you merged an 'I' and a sideways 'I' it would produce a 'T' while another person may think it creates an 'L', and I certainly could see yet others expecting it to create a 'V', 'X', or '+' etc.. When you start getting more complicated merges the problem compounds, often leaving you scratching your head as to why your solution isn't working and why some of the actual solutions do work. The bend factory often times seems to work as expected but there are definitely a few oddball cases that leave you a bit baffled. I know I was griping at the game out loud on at least one occasion ("OK game!" /s) And it truly is not just me. If you take a quick scroll through the Steam forums for this game you'll see plenty such threads with titles like "Why doesn't such and such create this or that" etc.

Now, all this probably isn't the biggest deal in the world if your only goal is to just beat all the levels in the game. You don't need to discover all the standard recipes for every letter to do so. This, however, leads to the other two problems I had with this game and they are that A) there really isn't a ton of challenge in this game if you don't create it yourself, and a much bigger problem B) the easier the game gets (because you've collected enough recipes to breeze through everything), the more you realize you're just building the exact same "sub routines" to create this or that letter. Every word you need to build with an "O" in it has you putting down the same set of factories to create that "O" and there is no way to build a preset schematic that you can just copy and paste, you have to go through the exact same steps every time of putting all the factories you need to make an "O" and hooking them all up. If you just view this game as a campaign with a set of levels to beat, once you discover at least one recipe for each letter you'll feel like you're spending most of your time just doing tasks you've already done before. Which is really boring! You already know how to do that, you're simply doing busy work.

These problems can be dealt with a bit. The game does introduce, as many other factory games do, leaderboards for different metrics (e.g. fewest factories used to create a given word) and certainly picking one or more of these to try and match the world best on is a great way to make you think some more about your design. Unfortunately for me, I got tired of this after awhile, but perhaps for you it'll have a more lasting impact on the replayability of the game. Another way to add more challenge in the game is to hunt for the achievements. I especially recommend the "collect all standard recipes" achievement, for me this was what the game really became, hunting for all the (standard) recipes for the 26 letters. Doing so will definitely lead back into the issue with interpretation on how certain merges and bends should work, but it was still a fun challenge to pursue and it was a bit of a saving grace.

Unfortunately it wasn't enough of a saving grace and as much as I don't want to give this games a thumbs down, my experience with it was on the whole negative. I enjoy the minimalist aesthetic, and the lo-fi tunes were relaxing. The gameplay started out great, but got more and more frustrating and tedious as time went on. This game is recommendable in some ways to some people, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't play it and instead would just play a Zachtronics game. It's a pity because it looks like such a cool game with a really neat idea, but for me, it's not just quite there.

Jars is what you get when you take a novel idea, however interesting it may be, and try to shape it into a game with a full length campaign; a mould in which it wasn't meant to fit. From the outset you breeze through level after level with very little effort or thought. This may seem normal, most games start you out easy, but a few hours later you're still walking through most levels with little difficulty (even when going for the optional collectibles which add an additional challenge to the levels they are found in). And it more or less continues like this right to the end of the game except for a few levels mixed in here and there in the later stages. The game goes from "too easy to be much fun" to "extremely difficult depending on RNG." These levels are annoyingly hard, because the difficulty mostly depends on some RNG with the contents of the jars you break (jars randomly either spawn enemies or give you items and towers to use against said enemies). These levels are beatable with the unlocks you have when you first get to them, but they are quite frustrating and require several restarts where you fail miserably over and over until you breeze through it easily on your last try.

Clearly the publisher dropped the ball with quality control when it comes to the overall balance of difficulty, but it's not the only place quality control was lacking. I also found the upgrade system to be a huge headache throughout the game, for no more simpler a reason than because your perks (equipped to your towers) are often deselected when you change towers on your loadout, requiring you to sift through all your perks to find the ones you want to use. I feel like I'm not alone in that I tend to use the same set of perks on any given tower so this really made the tedium all that more annoying, and given the fact that most levels are so easy it felt like I spent as much or more time equipping perks as I did playing some of the levels! (Most of the levels being so easy meant I could have probably beaten them easily without perks, but you never know how easy a level is until after the fact, and I always had that naive hope that the next level would have that nice balanced challenge I'm looking for when playing a game, but alas!) While there is a little bit more involved into why perks get deselected, know that it's going to happen regardless of what you try to do to mitigate it; the game often restricts how many or what type of towers you can use so you are forced to constantly change towers on each level, often leading to this perk deselection happening.

It is a shame, I do really enjoy the look and for the most part the feel of the game. Despite my frustration with it, I'll probably remember the game for quite some time. It has that sort of "instant classic" feel to it—a unique aesthetic that sort of feels like an all audiences version of Binding of Isaac and a very novel gameplay loop. Sadly the gameplay loop, as novel as it may be, just doesn't work as a full length game, at least with the way it's been tuned. I am truly perplexed that anyone tested this game, the issues I encountered with the game were glaring and ended up being the reasons I disliked this game instead of enjoying it. Perhaps there is the possibility to turn the idea of the game into something that hits the sweet spot for difficulty, but, as they say, 'this ain't it.'

Fun, fun, fun! Very reminiscent of Pokemon Snap, the only difference is that it's better.

So yes, it's an indie version of Pokemon Snap but without the Pokemon; and for those of you unfamiliar with Pokemon Snap, both it and Penko Park are railshooters where the only thing you "shoot" are the pictures you take with your camera. Instead, the developers have created a very rich and diverse world of creatures for you to explore through four detailed levels. As you go, you level up and unlock abilities and perks to help you snap pictures of these exotic creatures. Overall the amount of interactability and the various paths you can take keeps you engaged with the level beyond just taking pictures of all the creatures.

All of these elements keep the game fresh as you run through the same levels multiple times to tease out all the various poses and moods you can find the creatures in that need to be photographed (for example, a few creatures only have one standard pose, where as others have several poses/moods that each require its own picture). Rerunning through levels is standard in these games, and it's the sign of a game well made when the developers make this prospect both appealing and rewarding.

Admittedly if you are going for every single achievement you may get a little irritated on hunting down some of the sneakiest creatures in some of their rare poses, at least if you don't use guides to do so. I never quite reached this point, so my only personal criticism of the game is that the rating system (your pictures are rated on a scale of 1-3 stars) is very simplistic, it's based entirely on zoom and doesn't take into account focus, background, other creatures being in the shot, etc.

Otherwise, all other elements of this game, be it sound effects or visuals, are well-crafted and really work together to give the game a unique and special charm. Everything comes to life, both the environment and the creatures you are tasked to photograph. I can't recommend this game enough!

A very fun lil' puzzle game that's well polished for it's modest price tag. It's only real "fault" is it's brevity, you could easily beat the game in one sitting, and not a very long sitting at that. Considering it's only an hour long game, some of the puzzles will make you think and a few will take some working out.

Looking around at some other reviews, I've seen this game likened to The Witness. It certainly makes you think like The Witness and it does make use of the game world in the way The Witness does (or at least its topdown equivalent), but just keep in mind those elements are explored to a much lesser extent in this game due to its short length.

At any rate, I had a lot of fun with the game and highly recommend it!

I had a lot of fun playing this vn! It's a whodunit set on a campus for magical girls (the best setting) where you play as Sidney, a student thrust into a situation where you must solve a murder case. There are five other characters in the game, which helps keep the story nice and focused. Of these five, there are two pairs of friends (with an odd character then left out) that tend to stick together and spend a lot of time with one another. There is still lots of interplay between both pairs, but a lot of the interactions between Sidney and the other characters are internally within these pairs. I really liked the contrast this creates as you play around with the game choosing different routes and seeing how the story unfolds from the different perspectives of these characters.

This game begs to be played through to each of the many endings (even the ones where you get turned into a crystal statue or get trapped in Wonderland). Each playthrough offers you new insights into the events that have transpired as well as the motivations and personalities of the various characters (whom I should remind you, are all murder suspects!). By the time you reach the conclusion of the journey, having played through all the endings and learning everything that you can, you'll realize just how much your own understanding and perception has changed since the very beginning. It's definitely not the outcome you would have expected when you began the game!

Do check this one out!

A Summer with the Shiba Inu is a wonderful indie VN that reads like The Hunger Games crossed with Ready, Player, One with some mystery sprinkled on and of course lots and lots of doggos! As awesome as that sounds already, it's manages to be even better than that! Mixing flavors of adventure, action, and mystery, the game keeps you on your toes—err, paws—from start to finish!

You follow the story of Syd the dog, as she returns to Shiba Island (dear dev, please tell us where such island is located IRL, thanks!). Syd was (and perhaps still is) a madly skilled ARIna—a virtual reality battle royale game—player and finds the old life she left behind as a top ARIna player catching up to her in the present as she attempts to solve the mystery of her missing brother. The story is superbly arranged: a variety of doggo characters with a satisfying array of personalities, good doggos, bad doggos, shades of gray doggos, and even some weird doggo named Monukai; jumps in the timeline are carefully deployed to help fill in with Syd's backstory and are well executed to also add intrigue and suspense in the current timeline; alternate spurts of "real world" story time followed up by spurts of ARIna story time alternately give you time to relax and catch up on the story and get to know the doggos and on the other side gives you lots of actions to keep you on your... yes, paws. Add this all up and throw in the ridiculously cute (and effective) faces Syd makes when she is upset, or happy, or ashamed... it makes for a story well told.

The final bark on A Summer with the Shiba Inu is that it's a howl of a game, it is certainly not one that is 'all bark and no bite', but rather it's the doggone best VN I have ever played! (take that Hatoful Boyfriend) Alright, that's it, that's all the tortured dog puns I can come up with for one review. Simply put, just get this fantastic gem, and enjoy your stay with the Shiba Inus, no matter what season you play it in!

One of the best soundtracks you can find on Steam, especially of the electronic persuasion. Nearly a decade old and it hasn't aged a bit. I own it via an old humble bundle, but thought it was a huge injustice that such a great soundtrack hasn't hit the 10 review threshold, so I purchased again just to post this.

Favorite Track: Amethyst Caverns

While there have been some good top down tower defense offerings in the last year or two, I haven't seen very many 3D TD games that have piqued my interest. That changed as soon as I saw this game— right away I was getting Defense Grid / Sol Survivor vibes, both games I enjoyed thoroughly. A friend and I quickly purchased it and went through the entire campaign.

Does it live up to my expectations? I can easily say yes. The co-op campaign was a lot of fun. The game has full maze building mechanics with a mix of tower defense elements and RTS elements via a ship you control. The range of towers and abilities is fairly diverse and I certainly find myself adapting my build and overall strategy as I tried out different towers. This is further expanded by the upgrade system, which lets you and your co-op partner specialize. In our game this lead to me building tower arrangements and my co-op partner developing units and upgrading his ship. With a good number of maps, all of which vary both aesthetically and with their layouts, the overall game offers a lot of room for experimentation.

It does have it's problems though. It certainly lacks some of the lasting appeal that I found in Sol Survivor, even in co-op, the story was very bland (and the fact that the enemy who ruins the protagonist's life is an alien species called "Xenos" was not endearing to me at all giving the general political climate of past years, but I digress), and the final level was a tad anti-climatic. Aside from that the only other problems I had were just nitpicky such as difficulty tuning (I personally found the game to be a bit lacking in challenge) and perhaps some tuning on abilities and towers, but none of these issues were detractions from the enjoyment I got out of the game.

Overall this was an enjoyable TD that has filled the void where there has been a relative lack of 3D tower defense games coming out.

I bought a handful of OSTs during the latest Steam sale, added them all to a new playlist and I've been playing it on shuffle. They're all great OSTs, yet everytime I find myself tabbing to my player to see which song is playing because I am loving it, it turns out to be from the Valley OST.

Easily one of my all-time favorite OSTs

What a fantastic game! (full review to be posted at a later date)