11
Products
reviewed
0
Products
in account

Recent reviews by Wormwood

< 1  2 >
Showing 1-10 of 11 entries
1 person found this review helpful
19.1 hrs on record
This Review Originally Appeared on IndieHangover at: http://www.indiehangover.com/review-elaine/

I’ve got a soft spot for puzzle games, and the indie scene is a fantastic place to find games presenting puzzles in new and innovative ways.

However, elaine truly surprised me, not only for its remarkable difficulty, but also its brilliant design. What appears to be a strange version of color match with a pulsing electronic soundtrack quickly reveals itself to be a test of coordination, memory, perspective and reflexes, all at the same time.

elaine has an incredibly simple premise: You have to match the color and position of a number of squares in a short amount of time. As you progress, more colors are added. The game ends when time runs out on the clock. Sounds easy, right?

It isn’t.

The perspective you’re given of the solution is just slightly off enough to require a little bit of adjustment, and you’re given a remarkably small amount of time to complete the puzzle. As you progress, more and more colors are added, and you’ll need to cycle through them in the right order while moving to match things up. Make a mistake? Suddenly those spots have disappeared. Get the next puzzle correct and they’ll return, but fail too many times and you’ll be working with a very small playing area.

The mechanics of elaine may be simple, but they’re executed so precisely and accurately that they cannot help but be compelling. It took me quite a few tries before I figured things out, and it felt frustrating before then, but once things clicked, I was entranced, driven even, to keep playing.

elaine is entirely fair. all the rules are laid out to you, and its as clear as…well, colors on a white board… what you need to do. And while you may fail and fail and fail again, you can feel yourself making new connections, learning tricks on how to look at specific orientations, your fingers getting ever so faster. That sense of improvement and learning is infectious and breeds a competitive spirit to improve.

elaine's absolutely amazing soundtrack, and only helps to keep you driven. The pulsing electronic beats urge you to move faster and faster, pushing yourself to get the combinations of color and position correct. It puts you into a frantic, trance-like state. Time seems to slow slightly, and you’ll feel yourself putting up blinders to the rest of the world, concentrating completely on lining up the fluorescent blocks creeping towards you.

elaine has two game modes, an arcade and a classic mode . Mechanically, there’s not a tons of difference. Arcade will see you going for as high a score as possible, while classic mode is more of a last as long/get as far kind of affair. Personally, I found the competitive spirit taking over and arcade move claimed most of my time, and the end screen does a fantastic job of showing you how you got your score, and how far away from the next ranking you were.

elaine is challenging, and addictive. With bright, clear visuals and an amazing soundtrack, it’s a game that puzzle fans should absolutely check out, particularly if they’ve got a competitive streak.

Still not sure why it’s titled elaine though…

Find More Reviews, Interviews and Previews from the world of Indie Games and Indie Game Development at www.IndieHangover.com | On Twitter at @IndieHangover |
Posted May 17, 2017.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
No one has rated this review as helpful yet
2.2 hrs on record (2.1 hrs at review time)
This is an Excerpt from the Review Which Originally Appeared on IndieHangover at: http://www.indiehangover.com/review-tumbleseed/

Roguelikes are infamous for their difficulty and their learning curves, but also popular for their righteous sense of fulfillment and reward from overcoming the odds. When you have “the run,” it’s a feeling other genres of games can’t convey.

TumbleSeed fits within that definition splendidly. However, as its namesake implies, it brings to the table one major gameplay point that makes it feel wholly unique compared to the rest of the genre – rolling.

TumbleSeed is a game all about rolling, balancing and praying as you make your way up a procedurally generated mountain. I say praying because this game is difficult. The rolling mechanic takes a while to learn, as you fumble and panic, getting smashed by enemies on the stage or fall into a pit, taking you back to the bottom of the mountain. You roll by moving the left and right joysticks up and down, balancing your seed character on a platform that goes all the way across the middle of the screen. It starts out being rather difficult, but it does get easier and easier with every attempt. Once you learn the dead zones and the hitbox for the seed, ascension starts to feel easier. Even so, after ten hours of my own personal attempts, I still haven’t reached the top.

The difficulty shouldn’t dissuade you however. The game is well balanced between the length of the game itself and your own personal growth. Being only five levels long, a single playthrough can take anywhere from ten to thirty minutes depending on skill and strategy. At the end of each run the game shows you how far you made it up the mountain, which is awesome feedback for motivating the player. I kept finding myself thinking, “just one more try.”

Though I still haven’t made it very far, I’m far from putting it away. Every run feels different from the last and I’m constantly formulating new strategies. This is thanks to the many power-ups and special auras you can acquire for your seed, including abilities like invisibility and flight, or weapons like missiles or flails. You’ll use these abilities to help you get across the batches of holes or dispatch of the enemy creatures trying to stop your ascension.

To use abilities, however, you need crystals to fund it and a plot of soil to plant on. Crystals are TumbleSeed’s form of currency, and you have a few ways to gather these. One is to just pick them up on your way up the mountain, as a few of them will spawn naturally. You could also kill enemies or plant them using the Crystal Seed ability, which is free to use and gives you two crystals for every three crystal plants grown. The different abilities cost different amount of crystals, with more powerful abilities costing more. You have limited planting spots to use the abilities, so make sure you’re making good decisions on your trek!

For players who need a bit of motivation in their games, TumbleSeed also has a series of quests given to the player to unlock teleportation nodes in the villages between each section of the mountain. The goals of the quest are in place to teach you many of the game’s mechanics in fun, engaging way. As you focus on the quests, you’ll naturally be learning and be improving in the regular gameplay pointing you closer to overall success in the game. Once you unlock the teleporters, you can use them to fast forward to the later sections of the game. Use those shortened runs to learn how to avoid the more difficult creatures and obstacles introduced in those later areas of the mountain.

TumbleSeed has so much to offer in a relatively small package. Between the several strategies formed from different abilities, to the skill of precise joystick-movement, there is so much to learn and master here. Despite being able to learn the majority of the mechanics within five minutes, it will take you hours of gameplay before you reach the summit that constantly feels like it’s just ahead. The reward in small successes alone is worth it, and I greatly anticipate the first time I triumphantly accomplish the hike I first set out to do. TumbleSeed is worth your time and investment, and for Nintendo Switch owners, there aren’t many more titles at this time that are more suited for the platform.

Find More Reviews, Interviews and Previews from the world of Indie Games and Indie Game Development at www.IndieHangover.com | On Twitter at @IndieHangover
Posted May 4, 2017.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
No one has rated this review as helpful yet
16.9 hrs on record
This Review Originally Appeared on IndieHangover at:http://www.indiehangover.com/review-mr-shifty/

Mr. Shifty does a fantastic job of making you feel like a superhero. Blinking through walls, between enemies, and laying low wave after wave of goons with only your fists, a random broom you found and the head of a statue is exhilarating, but be warned: You might feel like a superhero, but you’re far from invulnerable. Mr. Shifty is brutal, and while it’s easy to get used to the mechanics, mastering them to really excel will take some time.

Mr Shifty wastes no times on origin stories or background, and instead drops you right into the action at the start of a heist. Your goal is to steal some deadly mega-uranium from Mr. Stone, a villainous criminal billionaire. There’s a lot of goons between you and your prize, but luckily, you’ve got just the skill set for this job.

In Mr. Shifty, you’re able to blink short distances, leaving behind a brief puff of blue smoke a la Night Crawler. Unfortunately, whatever convenient plot point gave you this skill didn’t grace your with invulnerability or super toughness: One bullet, one laser beam or one particularly brutal punch is all it takes to stop you permanently.So, as Mr. Shifty, you’ll need to rely on hit and run tactics, using the environment and your enemies slower reactions against themselves and a dash of slow mo, activated after you get a high enough combo and a bullet gets close enough to you.

The combination of fast paced melee combat, hordes of enemies, and the ability to dart around the environment, through walls and doors, is an incredibly potent combination, and Mr Shifty will have you feeling like a superhero in no time. Of course, this will all end pretty darn quickly when you accidentally blink a hair to far away from a thug holding a shotgun to land the punch you intended for his face, and instead get a load of lead in your own.

You will die… a lot… in Mr. Shifty, particularly while figuring mechanics and what you can get away with out. It takes a few levels to get a good handle on how far you can blink, and your characters hit box, but once that clicks, the gameplay feels absolutely amazing. While there are more than a few moments where death is all but certain, there are plenty of checkpoints throughout the game, so it never feels like you loose all that much progress.

Another thing that Mr. Shifty does incredibly well is nailing the comic book aesthetic. Unlike the overly-gritty Hotline Miami Mr. Shifty has been compared to so often, the characters and environments are depicted with clear lines and bold colors. The main character has a particularly striking outline, which makes him clearly stand out from the many enemies you’ll be laying the smack down on.

My only complaint is that Mr. Shifty‘s narrative feels incredibly lack luster. Narrative clearly isn’t the focus of Mr. Shifty, but what’s there feels rather rushed, under-developed, and an excuse to include and explain game mechanics, rather than develop characters. This didn’t stop me from enjoying Mr. Shifty, but it did stick out to me.

It should also be noted that Mr. Shifty is clearly set up to be a speedrunner’s dream. Every level times you, and it’s very obviouslt that there are some very tricky manuevers that could be pulled to shave second off your time. The speedruns that are already out there of the game’s first/tutorial level (which has been available in beta) make we feel like I’m a sloth on a slow day.

Mr. Shifty is a fast paced, action game that will make you feel like a comic book hero. Speedrunners will absolutely adore the game, and even if you’re not looking to break the record for fastest completion, Mr. Shifty is an incredibly fun, with engaging combat and mechanics.

Find More Reviews, Interviews and Previews from the world of Indie Games and Indie Game Development at www.IndieHangover.com | On Twitter at @IndieHangover
Posted April 24, 2017.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
3 people found this review helpful
7.7 hrs on record
This Review Originally Appeared on IndieHangover at:http://www.indiehangover.com/review-asura/

I’m a hug fan of world mythology, and the prospects of a game set in the world of Indian Mythology, a mythical universe often underrepresented in the west. Asura offers a colorful, comic-like dive into the world of Indian Mythology, following a demons tale of revenge on the Daeva Empire. You will die during this assault, that’s no question, but you’ll be reincarnated to strike out once more, mechanically imagined through the use of rogue-like elements and an incredibly innovative procedurally generated skill tree that’s different every time you are reborn.

Asura will feel immediately familiar to any fans of the Diablo Series or it’s ofshoots, and certainly takes ample inspiration from that classic series. However, Asura differs from Diablo’s formula in a number of key areas.

First and foremost, Asura is about skill-shots and precise dodging, not stat stacking. While the armor and weapons you pick up in Asura do have stats and effects letting you tailor your build as you play, you’ll never get to the min-maxing that exists in Diablo simply because Asura is a much faster paced game. You have a small amount of health, and it takes only a few hits to die, but the same applies to your enemies. Combat is fast paced, frantic and involves a lot of dodging, weapons switching and stamina management.

You can’t spam attacks in Asura precisely because of this. Ranged enemies take less damage by default from ranged attacks, Melee enemies take less damage from melee attacks, and magical enemies take less damage from magic. Additionally, every weapon has a stamina cost for each use, from lightning fast 0 stamina cost claws, to heavy hitting hammers that use up 4 stamina every swing. You’ll gain more stamina and health as you level up and collect rare pieces of armor, but that never completely removes the stamina management aspect from combat. Asura ends up feeling like a tactical game, where every action must be carefully considered to unleash the most destructive power, and spamming will see you sent back to the depths of hell quicker than you can say Maharaja Hasirama.

Leveling up is where the creativity of Asura’s innovation really shines. Asura utilizes a procedurally generated skill tree to level up, different every time you launch a new assault. While the four branches always remain thematically the same (Yodha Shastra will always relate to weapon damage, Mantra Shastra always increases your damage over time effects, Bal Shastra always increases your health, and Chalak Shastra alwasy increases your stamina), but the individual skill inside that tree vary wildly, from various types of shields, to health absorbing attacks, to instant kill super-moves. The active skills in this tree recharge not over time, but over kills, which is a fantastic means of balancing the power of some of these brutal abilities. You may have a magical nuke in your arsenal, but you need to kill 50 enemies the regular way before you can use it.

The end result is that while each run feels familiar, it also feels varied enough to keep things interesting and engaging. Combined with random loot drops and randomized enemies, you have to be flexible to use the best tools presented to you. One run, that might mean hefting a massive hammer and pumping points into stamina so you can actually use it, while the next, you might be flinging magical bolts of fire and poison about the battlefield.

Want to learn more about the evolution and development of this procedurally generated skill tree? Check out our Interview with developer Zain Fahadh:

Visually, Asura is colorful, varied and well constructed, but in some ways I cannot help but feel an opportunity is missed. Asura is steeped in India Mythology, and part of me wishes this was more heavily embraced in the artistic style of the game. The game is very well directed visually, with consistent character models, background art with incredible depth and fantastic variety, but in many ways looks just like so many other game’s in the same genre. I do think that, from a marketing standpoint, Ogre Head Studios made the right choice here, as this art style will no doubt appeal to a wider audience, but I cannot help put want to see a version of Asura paying homage to the classic art of 16th and 17th century India, with even brighter colors, blue skinned gods, and brilliant geometric patterns. Things feel a bit toned down, and that disappoints me a bit, but I’ll be quick to admit this is a niche complaint.

Asura is a fast paced hack and slash that has an enormous amount of replayability woven into its mechanics. The idea of a procedurally generated skill tree is far more than a gimmick, and it keeps you on your toes and demands your flexibility every time you play. Fans of Diablo should certainly check the game out, as it emulates Blizzard’s well forged formula, but takes it in a very different direction, which provides an incredibly fun experience.

Want to Learn more about one of the developers of Asura? Check out our Interview with Zain Fahadh of Ogre Head Studios here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8jW7E3UW-A

Find More Reviews, Interviews and Previews from the world of Indie Games and Indie Game Development at www.IndieHangover.com | On Twitter at @IndieHangover
Posted April 24, 2017. Last edited April 24, 2017.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
1 person found this review helpful
2.7 hrs on record (2.7 hrs at review time)
This Review Originally Appeared on IndieHangover at: http://www.indiehangover.com/review-flinthook/

If there is one thing that makes pirates better, it’s being space pirates, and if there is one thing that makes a platformer better, it’s having a hookshot.

Flinthook happens to have both.

With fast paced grappling, the ability to slow time in hectic situations, and a continuing sense of progress even when you die, Flinthook will not only have you coming back for more, but it will have you doing it with a big goofy grin.

I have to talk about Flinthook’s art style and design first, simply because I love it so much. Aesthetically, Flinthook absolutely oozes charm. The pixel sprites, the art style, the weird and wonderful characters, and the music of Flinthook are all meticulously and perfectly executed to make a game that is on one hand a nostalgic homage to the many platformers of yesteryear, while also being something entirely new and original.

I had a great big grin on my face practically the entire time that I played Flinthook, even when I was getting my butt handed to me by a particular tough challenge. I couldn’t help but feel happy zipping through the air with my hookshot, slowing time to pop off a couple shots, before zipping back out of harms way: It’s just plain fun, and you should take that as a rousing endorsement.

The gameplay loop of Flinthook is pretty straightforward; You goal is to raid a series of pirate ships to collect Ghost Gems, which you will need to feed to Slimey, your Goo Compass. Feed him (it?) enough Ghost Gems, and he (it?) will be able to lead you straight to your current bounty, worth a mountain of gold. (Listen, I’m not sure about the gender terminology of Goo Compasses, or how they work. Just…. just roll with it.)

Different Bounties need a different amount of Soul Gems to be located, and you’ll get one Soul Gem from the Space Shell you find inside the final, large chest in each ship. This isn’t easy though, and you’ll have to scour the space worthy vessels room by room, blasting baddies, dodging lasers, and jumping over pits of hazardous slime all the while. These ships aren’t linear, and some can be positively labyrinthine, so there’s some exploring that will have to happen.

To accomplish this, You’re armed with three main tools: a Blasma Pistol, a time-slowing Chrono-belt and a Quickhook grapple. While each of these elements have appeared in countless games before Flinthook, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them so wonderfully and perfectly combined. The combination of being able to slow time, hookshot you’re way across the screen, and fire off energy blasts is easy to understand, difficult to truly master, and insanely fun.

Part of this is because everything controls beautifully. Sure, there’s a little getting used to how far you can throw your hookshot, or the range of your gun, but once you get comfortable with your arsenal and learn your tool’s range, you’ll be zipping about the map, feet barely touching the floor as you gun down enemies with (relative) ease.

I started playing Flinthook with the keyboard and mouse, but ended up moving over to the gamepad after a few runs. In trying both control schemes out, I’d say that I prefer the gamepad, but that both styles of control work well. It never really felt like the game was designed for one and ported to the other, and the keyboard/mouse combo felt a little bit more accurate, while the gamepad felt like it encouraged you to be a bit more fast paced. Take that for what you will, and if you’re not loving one,try the other if you can!

The entire Flinthook experience is made even more interesting thanks to Perk Deck. Before you begin each run, you’ll have the opportunity to outfit yourself with a number of perks, tailoring your experience to take advantage of your strengths, mitigate your weaknesses, and help ensure you get exactly what you need to keep moving. You get a Perk Pack each time you level up, which contains a random perk, increasing your available choices and options, and over time you’ll be able to equip more and more perks before launching your ship.

You won’t be able to change these perks after you start you’re run so it’s worth thinking about combos that will apply in a lot of different situations. The only time you’ll be able to change your perks is after you die.

And you will die in Flinthook : a lot. The obstacle courses you’ll find in some of these space pirate ships are brutal, there are hordes of enemies to get through, and that’s not even touching how brutal some of the bosses can be. Luckily, Flinthook makes every run feel worthwhile. While you do loose your Ghost Gems, you keep any Green Coins you happen to collect, which can be used at the Black Market to purchase new weapons, HP and XP upgrades, and more Perk Slots. You’re always making progress towards the next upgrade, and those upgrades make you stronger and stronger, able to take on more and more of the game’s challenges.

Flinthook looks and feels fantastic. The game controls beautifully, combining three classic video game tools to create a fast paced platforming experience that may be punishing and brutal, but never feels pointless or like a waste of time thanks to offering you continual ways of increasing your abilities through the Perk System. The art of the game is almost as colorful as the characters inhabiting this charming world of space piracy, and everything from the animation to the soundtrack is just plain charming.

Flinthook feels like a classics, and I’m convinced that it will be.

Find More Reviews, Interviews and Previews from the world of Indie Games and Indie Game Development at www.IndieHangover.com | On Twitter at @IndieHangover
Posted April 24, 2017.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
1 person found this review helpful
1.2 hrs on record
This Review Originally Appeared on IndieHangover at: http://www.indiehangover.com/review-induction-by-bryan-gale/

Induction was one of the first games that introduced the concept of not using text or tutorials to instruct a player to me. I’ve since grown to love this mechanical choice, and Induction remains one of the best examples of how teach a player without actually saying anything. This is all the more impressive because of how difficult Induction’s puzzles are

Induction will frustrate and confuse you. It will cause your brain to hurt. And then, in a moment that can only be described as the most glorious “a-ha” moment you’re likely to have had, you’ll get it and love every time-bending second of it.

You are given the ability to jump through time, and must use this to solve puzzles by co-operating with your past selves. As the game progresses, you must choreograph your actions across multiple timelines, and explore the counter-intuitive possibilities your increasing powers permit. You will learn to construct seemingly impossible solutions, such as paradoxical time loops, where the future depends on the past and the past depends on the future.

The mechanics of Induction all focus around it internal logic of time travel. It was initially a little odd to think of induction as a game about time travel; it looks like something more akin to a puzzle platformer, but the two concepts are not mutually exclusive, and Induction is ENTIRELY about time travel. in every level you have a spot you need to get your cube to. After the introductory levels (more on those later), you’ll have to figure out how to create a path to that spot by activating bridges our pathways, often at a very specific time.

You accomplish this by choreographing time loops. You very quickly gain the ability to jump through time, seeming a former version of yourself performing the very action you performed in the exact timing you performed them in. you’ll need to plan ahead and time yourself to make sure all the right movements are made to reveal you path to the end of the level.

Induction's logic is watertight. Complex, mind bending and at times incredibly frustrating, but watertight. It becomes very clear very quickly what you can and cannot do in this version of time travel, what will cause solution-ruining paradoxes, and what you can game for success. I think I was most surprised by how important patience was in Induction. At times, you’ll simply need to sit and wait, giving your future self time to move into the correct position, before continuing on into that very future yourself. I can see some people being annoyed by the necessity to stop and do nothing for a while, but once i realized the inherent power of waiting, I loved it and Induction become a much slower, more tactical game for me.

Typically, I would spend one or two attempts feeling out the level, learning what buttons activated what, where I could go, which drops i could get up and which i could not. Then i’d sit. My brain would race with ideas and potential solution, when and where to travel in time, and which routes to open first.

Then I’d execute my plan, inevitably fail and have to go back to the beginning.

Induction’s tough. REALLY tough, and inevitably some people will get frustrated with its difficulty. However, like so many games with high difficulty, the pay off is that much sweeter. When you do solve a puzzle in Induction, its a fantastic feeling of accomplishment and success.

Aesthetically, Induction does a number of subtle things that work spectacularly well. The minimalist levels and blocks being moved the player are all defined in crisp lines, with bold solid colors that make distinguishing levels and platforms very easy; an important factor when every move has to be planned out meticulously. The colors of the levels, background and pieces of Induction actually shift very gradually over the entire color spectrum as you play the game, which I though was a fantastic effect, and is seamlessly executed.

The music of Induction also deserves a specific mention. Tim Shiel has created a wonderfully ambient soundtrack that responds to your progress in an equally as seamless way as the shifting colors of the levels. It’s always surprisingly happy, and brought a smile to my face every time a new refrain

Induction is easily one of the best puzzle games I’ve ever played. Not only does it look and sound fantastic, but it is wholly and completely challenging, while being trusting enough to let you, the player, figure everything out. It respects your intelligence in a way many games do not, and it’s a refreshing feeling. Granted, at times, this means you have to think really REALLY hard to figure the game out, and this isn’t always a relaxing prospect. If you’re willing to step up and put your mind to these time-bending puzzle, Induction will not disappoint.

Make sure to check out our IndieDev Interview with developer Bryan Gale if you’d like to learn more about Induction’s inspiration and his journey as an indie developer.

Find More Reviews, Interviews and Previews from the world of Indie Games and Indie Game Development at www.IndieHangover.com | On Twitter at @IndieHangover
Posted April 12, 2017.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
No one has rated this review as helpful yet
0.6 hrs on record
This Review Originally Appeared on IndieHangover at: http://www.indiehangover.com/review-leaving-lyndow-by-eastshade-studio/

Leaving Lyndow is a short glimpse into a much larger world. Taking place on the day a young explorer leaves her home town on a dangerous adventure, the game won’t take you long to experience, but you’ll be lost a beautiful fantasy world full of complex conversations, wonderful world building and some surprisingly fun mini games you wouldn’t normally see in what initially appears to be a “walking simulator”

Mechanically, Leaving Lyndow is quite straightforward: You play as Clara, a newly appointed Junior Marine Researcher to the Guild of Scientific Exploration in the world of Eastshade. It’s your last day in your hometown of Lyndow, and you’ll spend it packing your trunk, reminiscing about your life and saying your goodbyes to friends and family. This takes the form of a number of conversations and environmental explorations, with a number of optional mini games somewhat hidden in the game’s five different areas.

There’s not a ton of gameplay in Leaving Lyndow; exploring every area completely and playing all of the mini games will probably only take you an hour or so, but what’s there is incredibly well done. The environments have a nostalgic weight to them, and Clara’s thoughts that appear at the bottom of the screen give us hints of the backstory these items and location hold, but never explicitly tell us the backstory. You’re a visitor in this life, and are only getting a snapshot of one very important day.

One of Leaving Lyndow’s biggest strengths is the world building going on. Leaving Lyndow is set in the same universe as Eastshade Studio’s major project; Eastshade. This game is set around 80 years before the events of Eastshade, and while Lyndow will be a place you visit in Eastshade, the area is in a completely different state than you’ll see it there. Each area is littered with posters, excerpts from books and artwork that immediately give you the sense that you are part of a much larger universe that has existed for a long time.

I did find the lack of the ability to sprint frustrating at first, but sprinting through this world would defeat the intent of the game. This is a slow and reflective journey. You’re meant to take your time, look at the places you’re walking through and talk to the people living there.

This may sound to you like the makings of a so called “walking simulator”, but I’m pleased to say there are actually some objectives and goals at play in Leaving Lyndow. Besides the environmental interactions and conversations you’ll be looking to have to progress through each area, most areas have a small mini game to play through. These games take a number of different forms, from musical memory games, to treasure hunts, to ball games played with the town children. While not complex, they do add a fantastic element of interaction to the game, and are way more entertaining than I expected.

Leaving Lyndow is an absolutely beautiful game and a goldmine for desktop wallpapers. The environments are gorgeous, full of rich detail and numerous objects and people you can interact with. There’s a nice variety of interior and exterior areas to explore, but they are all full of interesting details. The areas are fairly small, but feel lived in and real: this feels like a very possible fantasy world that I’d be eager to explore. Warm light and neutral colors give the entire town of Lyndow a calmness, punctuated by the bittersweet knowledge that this could be the last time Clara will be seeing these faces and vistas.The music only amplifies the tone of the game; Soft piano trickles through the environments, calming you and accentuating thee slow pace of exploration and investigation.

The only thing that I found a bit disappointing in Leaving Lyndow was the lack of voice acting. This is a bit of a silly criticism to make, particularly when the dialogue in Leaving Lyndow feels so refreshingly real. It’s very clear that voice acting would be a major undertaking and expense that wouldn’t make sense for Leaving Lyndow’s scope, and additionally, would be a limiting factor in production (written dialog can be added into the game and manipulated in many more ways without having to worry about recording and such). Still, I cannot help but feel that I could loose myself in this world so easily were their a choir of voices filling Lyndow with their complaints, questions and conversations.

I think that many people will scoff at Leaving Lyndow’s length, but in many ways, this is a case of quality over quantity. True, Leaving Lyndow will cost you $3.99 for only about an hour, maybe two if you play through a couple times to see some other dialogue options, of game time. However, it’s an incredibly well made experience in a world that feels rich and full of life, even if we are only seeing one small corner of it. In that way, Leaving Lyndow succeeds at its goal of being both a stand alone and self contained preview of things to come in Eastshade, and a means of sparking curiosity about the world being created by Danny Wienbaum.

You can learn a whole lot more about Leaving Lyndow’s developer Danny Weinbaum, and how Leaving Lyndow relates to Eastshade, by checking out our IndieDev Interview with Danny here.

Find More Reviews, Interviews and Previews from the world of Indie Games and Indie Game Development at www.IndieHangover.com | On Twitter at @IndieHangover
Posted April 12, 2017. Last edited April 12, 2017.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
6 people found this review helpful
2.3 hrs on record
This Review Originally Appeared on IndieHangover at: http://www.indiehangover.com/review-seasteader-by-cosy-goat/

I’ve followed Seasteader for quite some time, and was eager to finally found my own sea based colony. Rich in micro management, and with surprising depth, Seasteader is a solid simulation game that fans of the genre will love, despite a few mechanical issues.

Seasteader puts you in the role of designing and managing a seastead, a largely self-sufficient community based on the open ocean. Seasteads are a real world endeavor, most often being built on derelict oil platforms, but your’s is built on an ever expanding raft of sorts. Each story mission gives you a set of goals, mainly to reach a certain population and profit, to meet in order to be considered a viable investment.

The main things you’ll be working against in Seasteader is your budget and your people’s happiness. Your budget is pretty self-explanatory: money in (trade profit and rent) versus money out (construction and upkeep expenses). Happiness is a little more nuanced though. At first, your initial colonists will be happy just to have a paying job, a roof to sleep under and food to eat, and having these things will always guarantee some immigrants are eager to come to your seastead. However, as your colony grows, you’ll need to provide other forms of diversion and entertainment.

While things start slowly and are relatively manageable, as you progress you’ll see things get more and more complex. Supply chains combine to let you make incredible profits by manufacturing more complicated good. You’ll become more and more self reliant, producing the different parts each of your buildings need. The depth of Seasteader is really quite impressive.

One of the things that set Seasteader apart from other simulation games is the lack of terrain. There are no mountains in your way, no streams to build along, no forest to be situated near: there is only the sea. The game only has two resources (oil and shallow water) the effect the placement of a few key production buildings, but otherwise, you have free reign to design your seastead however you’d like. It’s quite liberating to be able to build on a blank canvas, and it’s a very nice change of pace.

Seasteader’s controls aren’t incredibly intuitive. I wouldn’t in any way call them bad or impossible to use, but they do make a departure from many standard keybindings and layouts to other games. This means that it may take you a little bit of time to get use to what does what. All of the controls are explained very clearly in the game’s tutorial, and it didn’t take me long to adapt, but it was something the stood out to me.

The only parts of the game that gave me significant trouble was the Demolish and Walkway mechanics, which I found incredibly difficult to make work correctly. Certain tiles just could not be deleted no mater what I did, and walkways were very finicky to get laid down where I wanted them. The frustration that these two pieces of the game gave me was significant enough to cause me to restart more than once.

Seasteader is, like its counterparts, a micro management heavy game. You’ll be spending a lot of time looking at different windows, adjusting work shift, wages, and rents. Some people will eat this up, and others wouldn’t dare touch it with a ten foot pole. That’s fine, and Seasteader won’t be a game for everyone, just know that this is a slower paced game focused on numbers.

In fact, I particularly like the pacing of Seasteader. You’re punished horribly for over expanding too early in the game, and it is very important to watch your profit and expenses, figure out what your growing seastead can bear, and not be too tempted by every investment opportunitty that comes along. Everything is focused on getting the most economic efficiency out of every part of this seastead, and the game very quickly becomes a very dense, numbers focused affair, less about providing food to people and more about rent and wage control.

Visually, Seasteader doesn’t push any artistic boundaries, but matches the aesthetic it is aiming for perfectly. All of the buildings, people and environments are depicted in a style that reminds me of an architectural program, which fits with the general aesthetic of this kind of simulation and management game fantastically. Once things get on there way, it’s enjoyable to watch your carefully crafted seastead bustling away, watching people going to and from work, or to get food at the canteen. One thing that particularly surprised me was the quality of Seasteader’s music. It’s an incredibly peaceful soundtrack, with a distinct seas shanty vibe I absolutely fell in love with.

Seasteader is a niche game that fans of dense simulation games will enjoy. This goes doubly so if you enjoy the economic side of colony management, as this is where Seasteader really shines. Despite a few rather glaring mechanical issues, I found the process of planning and constructing a seastead both incredibly calming and stimulation, where the serene environment combined with some intense number crunching and micro-management.

Find More Reviews, Interviews and Previews from the world of Indie Games and Indie Game Development at www.IndieHangover.com | On Twitter at @IndieHangover
Posted April 11, 2017. Last edited April 12, 2017.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
16 people found this review helpful
1 person found this review funny
7.4 hrs on record
This Review Originally Appeared on IndieHangover at: http://www.indiehangover.com/review-along-the-edge-by-nova-box/

I was surprised by Along the Edge. I was made aware of the game by writer Geoffroy Vincens, who contacted me after seeing our coverage of Lucy Blundell’s One Night Stand and thinking the game might grab our interest. While I was initially a little skeptical about an “Adult Interactive Visual Novel with Occult Elements”, I am pleased to say my judging of this book by it’s cover was misplaced.

Along the Edge is certainly a mature story, dealing with adult themes, but it’s not over sexualized, or trying harder than it needs to to be taken seriously. Likewise, the occult elements of the story are not misplaced and don’t feel slapped on for ‘spice’. They are an integral and well constructed part of the plot.

More than anything, Along the Edge is a story about a woman, Daphne, dealing with past trauma and turning over a new leaf. This is not a story to put yourself into; it is Daphne’s story, and Along the Edge‘s dedication to this fact helps make it an engaging and thought provoking story where the choices you make really do matter, and have the potential to create entirely different narratives.

Along the Edge casts you as Daphne, a young woman who is in a pretty serious rut, unsatisfied with both her personal and professional life and having recently gone through a number of life changing traumas. One day, you find out your grandmother has made you the beneficiary of her estate, a large castle-esq villa in a french country village. You take this as a chance to get away from the negativity in your life and turn over a new leaf, taking a substitute teaching job in the villages school.

Suffice to say, there’s more going on than is let on at first glance. We won’t spoil anything, but by the end of things there are romantic relationships in play, generations old family feuds, ancient magic and prophetic dreams. All of this hinges on the choices you make as Daphne.

Note, I didn’t say ” The choices you make”. I said “the choices you make as Daphne”. Along the Edge is very much a story about a character who is already established, already has a history and motivations all her own. She is not a character you can easily mold to be your vision of yourself in this situations, and that isn’t the goal of the choices you make in Along the Edge. You’re guiding a character in one of a number of different ways, but these choices are firmly planted in the context of the world.

To me, this gave the story of Along the Edge, and the choices being made, a surprising weight. By restricting the reactions, choices, and ways things could play out based on the mindset and personality of an already established main character, the developers created and incredible sense of validity. True, there was less of a sense of self-reflection in this character, and you feel more like an outsider watching a story unfold as opposed to some other visual novels and narrative games that emphasis putting you into the shoes of their protagonist, but the choice is incredibly successful in engaging the player and getting them involved in the story.

Mechanically, the choices you make in Along the Edge are selected from the screen, and then the impact of those choices are relayed back to you in the form of a four-pointed compass at the top of the screen. Your choices each impact one of the four points of this compass: The Star, The Globe, The Sun or The Moon. Some choices will stagger between two of these symbols, but ultimately the choices you make will fall somewhere on this compass much like a four pointed alignment chart. Additionally, after particularly momentous decisions in the game, there will be very obvious visual changes to Daphne as she grows and learns about this world, and about herself.

By making these choices, character will change the way they react to you, enter or leave your life, or reveal new opportunities. One of the major axis that revolve around this compass is your acceptance or rejection of the magic imbued into this new environment. It’s clear there is something of a supernatural nature going on in your grandmother’s castle, and in the town, but you can steer Daphne towards either welcoming this magic with open arms, or pragmatically shutting the door in it’s face. This particular aspect of the game’s narrative over joyed me, as typically the acceptance of magic in stories involving it is a given fact. It was a wonderful change of pace to instead give the player a chance to accept or deny this fact, and see how this affected the characters in the story.

As noted above, this is spoiler free review, so we won’t reveal the major twists of the story, however you can rest assured that the choices made in Along the Edge are not only cosmetic. They have a real impact of the way this story unfolds, and the way Daphne fulfills her role in it. This fact alone gives Along the Edge an incredible amount of replayability, as there are numerous narratives to uncover and explore.

The art of Along the Edge is beautiful. The painterly scenes of castles and sleepy town shift between season and realities. The town is charming and beautiful, and Daphne’s grandmother’s castle oozes with mystery and history. However, the art chops of Along the edge really get to show their stuff in the dream sequences, which are trippy, fantastical and full of symbolism.

The music is just as fantastic, full of haunting piano melodies that are all at once haunting, morose and calming. The Art and music of Along the Edge combine beautifully and do a superb job of getting you in the exact brain space for this kind of slower paced narrative experience.

Along the Edge is a fantastic narrative experience that drops you into the life of a character in conflict. In conflict with herself, her environment, and even her reality. By guiding this character and making meaningful choices for her, you are made part of a story where those choices has demonstrable effects on the narrative and its conclusion. It’s a rewarding journey alongside a slice out of this character’s life, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Find More Reviews, Interviews and Previews from the world of Indie Games and Indie Game Development at www.IndieHangover.com | On Twitter at @IndieHangover
Posted April 11, 2017. Last edited April 12, 2017.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
2 people found this review helpful
2.7 hrs on record (2.7 hrs at review time)
Early Access Review
This Review Originally Appeared on IndieHangover at: http://www.indiehangover.com/review-vidar-by-razbury-games/


Reviewing Vidar has been a reflective experience for me. It’s a game that has grown with IndieHangover, and to see it reach release is a wonderful feeling. We covered it’s initial showing at the 2014 Boston FIG, updated our readers about it as it grew, and checked back in with developer Dean Razavi at PAXEast as the game neared it’s testing phase. However, I have avoided playing any alpha or beta versions of the game. I wanted to experience Vidar in as complete a form as possible.

Now that I have played through the game in its Early Access, feature complete, form, I can safely say that Vidar does what it promised to do 3 years ago: It is a game in which you are dropped into the middle of an intricate web of relationships and given the chance to make the best of a horrible situation. In Vidar, every choice you make has incredible weight, because, in this town, it very well may be a life-or-death decision.

This feeling of the importance of the choices you’re making really hits you as a player of Vidar on the third day. Day one and two serve as a sort of tutorial; you’re introduced to some important players in town, (hopefully) given some of your most important tools, and made aware of the curse of Vidar: A beast stalks and kills one person every night. One random person, and nobody is safe.

I’m stressing those two words because they are the core of what make Vidar so engaging, at times, so infuriating and so very interesting every time you play it. You can’t take anything for granted in Vidar.

Just finished collecting those ten mushrooms for the doctor? Sorry, He’s Dead.

Figured out where that grave is? Sorry, the old lady who helps you talk to the dead just died herself, meaning you can’t talk to that ghost you need to talk to.

Wanted to get an essential item? Sorry, person who gives it to you is dead.

This would be an interesting mechanic in any game, but Vidar goes one step further by putting just about everything you do that affects the world on a time limit. Nearly all of the tasks and quest you need to accomplish in the game take place inside a number of caves. However you only have a certain amount of time, around 10 minutes, to act in the cave before night falls and you must return to town, only to be informed of that night’s victim.

It’s tense, It’s terrifying, and it’s terrifically fun.

Some will no doubt hate the randomness of the events, or feel the wind ripped out of their sails when the last step of a quest is foiled by the Beast’s actions. However, that’s the point of Vidar: You’re not in control, you’re just trying to do as much good as you can in the face of a terrible disaster. You can’t save everyone, but you might be able to save someone.

One Note: We should say that Vidar does provide alternate ways to accomplish quest and get items should the quest or item giver meet a premature end at the hands of the beast. These ways are usually MUCH harder and more difficult, but they do exist.

Aesthetically, Vidar is superb. There’s a nostalgic consistency throughout the game, from the gorgeous pixel sprites, to the haunting music, to the wonderful environments that makes the world feel like something you explored in a game you played growing up, yet at the same time entirely fresh and new.

I was actually surprised at how expressive and emotive some of the characters ended up being. Simple movements, expressions, and even some emotion-filled pauses added a lot of life to the residents of Vidar, something that I haven’t seen in many games of the same artistic style.


The caves had enough graphical variety that they didn’t get too old, though there is, by design, quite a bit of retreading old ground. You’ll get access to new tools as you progress, and have to revisit old parts of the caves in Vidar on occasion to complete quests. While the environments are very well done, there’s only so much variety that can be achieved with a cave.

However, where Vidar makes up for this in the puzzles that take place inside these caves. If I have any complaints about the visual similarities of the four cave environments, they are easily dispelled by just how many different puzzles there are to figure out, and the variety of forms these puzzles take.

One day, you’ll be sliding on ice, bracing against rocks to redirect yourself. The next, it will be a puzzle involving switches and levers. Then, you’ll have to trap wolves. Another day, you’ll be grappling from post to post avoiding ice-cold water. The variety of the puzzles in Vidar is only enhanced by the temporary nature of many quests and objectives (due to everyone’s impending mortality). Having so many quests to accomplish, in such a short amount of time, before the random hand of The Beast smites the quest giver is an incredibly tense experience that I absolutely adored, and with Vidar’s inherent randomness, it has incredible replay value.



As Vidar enter’s early access, there is one other thing I’d like to mention as part of this review. I experienced a number of game breaking bugs during my playthroughs of Vidar in preparation for this review. The first was an issue causing Erik to return from the grave and give me another chance at his puzzle. The second was a glitch between patches that caused a save file to be corrupted. Both of these issue were fixed with lightning speed by Dean Razavi (in Patch and respectively), but I’d be remiss if I didn’t issue the caveat that this is Early Access, and there are still some issues being resolved in the game. Due to the random nature of Vidar, in my case this has meant a host of stories left unfinished. However, this did have a silver lining, as it gave me the chance to see things unfold in a myriad of different ways during my first week or so in the town of Vidar.

Vidar is a game that puts you in the role of a volunteer hero in a terrible situation. The fact that you cannot save everyone make saving anyone all the more meaningful. While some might balk at the randomness of the deaths, it’s that very mechanic that makes Vidar such a special experience and imbues it with intrinsic replayability. Combined with fantastic musical and art direction, Vidar may be the game where everyone dies, but it sure makes you feel alive.

Check Out our Interview with Developer Dean Razavi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWYLE76rMPY&t=1s

Find More Reviews, Interviews and Previews from the world of Indie Games and Indie Game Development at www.IndieHangover.com | On Twitter at @IndieHangover
Posted April 11, 2017. Last edited April 12, 2017.
Was this review helpful? Yes No Funny Award
< 1  2 >
Showing 1-10 of 11 entries