Recent reviews by Pietruszek

This review is a part of the Completionist's Point of View curator (the link will be added once the curator is up)

When I first saw this game on the Steam store, I was hesitant. The reviews were great, the combat looked slick and it's a metroidvania - a genre I really love! But the art style... didn't instantly click with me, because of some furry vibes I got from it. I started looking through reviews and opinions on the game, and I've stumbled upon one which said something along the lines: "If the art style is the only reservation you have about the game, just give it a chance". I decided to follow this advice and today I'm extremely happy that I did. While it's true that all of the game's characters are anthropomorphic animals, I'd say that its esthetics are a rather unique blend of "slightly anime" and old cartoons from the 80s and 90s. Even the game's subtitle (An Elysian Tail) refers to such cartoon ("An American Tail" from 1986). So, what I want to say by all of this is - even if you're not particularly fond of the game's art style, you should absolutely still give it a go. At some point in the game, you might even find yourself surprised that you ended up really liking this aspect of it, just like me.

With that out of the way, I need to say that the fact that this game was pretty much a one-man project is absolutely mind-blowing to me. I could accept that "Braid" or "Papers, Please" were done mostly by a single person. But when I heard that one guy (by the name of Dean Dodrill) made this awesome game with around 20 hours of content and only got help on the soundtrack, the voice-acting and half of the script, it wasn't something I could easily believe. When he started thinking about making this game, he was merely an illustrator and animator whose only contact with game development was some animation contributions for Jazz Jackrabbit 2. He only started learning programming and making his first simple micro-games about 4 years prior to Dust's actual release... What an absolute madman.

Let's talk a bit more about the game's design - shall we?

Dust: An Elysian Tail is a metroidvania with light RPG elements, slasher-like combat and rather simple, but humorous, charming and touching story. The game is divided into a prologue and 5 separate chapters. Each of the chapters introduces a new main location. Aside from that, there are also a few mini-locations you can visit as a part of some of the game's sidequests. In total, there are 12 unlockable locations you can choose on the world map upon exiting each of them. The metroidvania nature of the game obviously means that you'll need to revisit each of them if you want to unravel all of their secrets, but I didn't really feel an urge to do that before nearing the end of the game when I acquired the last of the character abilities, which would allow me to make the second run through the game, this time without skipping anything. This meant that a lot of the chests I now could reach were accessible to me sooner than at the end of the game, and they contained wearable items that were already far worse than my endgame stuff. I could still sell them and buy something more useful for me, but it's definitely an area of the game that could use some more balancing.

The combat is a thing you'll spend at least half of your playtime on. Thankfully, this is also one the game's biggest merits. It consists of several types of attacks you can easily chain into simple but striking combos. Once you get used to it, it becomes more of a dance than a fight - you fly all over the screen, cast really flashy spells and obliterate troops of creatures stubbornly trying to block your way. Even though I really enjoy the mesmerizing nature of the combat, it's also tied closely to my biggest issue with the game - the difficulty. There are 4 difficulty settings you can choose from (and apparently change in the middle of the game, but I only found out about that after finishing it...): Easy, Normal, Tough and Hardcore. But the thing is... according to both my own taste and many other opinions I've read, these are actually easier than their names suggest. I think they should be called (respectively): Beginner, Easy, Normal and Hard. I've played through the whole thing on what the game calls "Tough". I died a few times in Chapter 1, but once I got past the beginning and leveled up a bit, the difficulty curve dropped. The second half of the game was a breeze for me, including the final boss whom I defeated on my first try, despite dying a couple of times on the first boss. It's definitely not how it should be, but it's also nothing game-breaking (at least for me). I'd just recommend you to use my renamed difficulty levels to pick one for yourself and remember that you can always tinker with this setting in the options menu.

Another part of the game which really deserves some praise is the soundtrack. It's mostly composed by HyperDuck SoundWorks, who are not really well known besides their work on Dust and Kingdom Rush Frontiers. It's so surprisingly good that it instantly joined my collection of favorite game OSTs, and I still listen to it quite regularly, even though I finished the game over 4 years ago.

Overall, despite some small issues, I consider this game to be a must-play.

Oh and by the way, if you decide to give this game a go and you happen to be a person who likes reading about game development, there are a bunch of very nice articles talking about the hardships of Dust's development processes. I really recommend checking them out, once you finish your playthrough ;)

My time to 100%: 23h
Estimated time to 100%: 10-30h (depends on your playstyle, skipping the dialogue or not and whether you'll keep playing after getting all of the achievements to do everything else there is to do in-game)

Warning: there's 1 missable achievement (play on Tough or Hardcore difficulty) and a pair of limited ones (you need to save before choosing between 2 dialogue options to be able to choose them both in one playthrough).

In my opinion, the achievement design of this game is close to perfection. The achievements encourage you to explore all of the things the game has to offer and to try out some of the extra challenges. The ones that are missable or limited make sense to be there and avoiding skipping them is not a hassle. Once you finish the game, you can still load up the last save and continue on with the rest of the missing sidequests and collectibles. There are some tiny things I'd possibly change in some of them, but honestly, the developer did an absolutely amazing job with this aspect of the game.

1. Start the game on either Tough or Hardcore difficulty.
   
2. Play through the whole game working on the achievements whenever you feel you have a good opportunity to do them. The only thing you really need to keep your eye on is the fact that to collect both of the limited achievements in one playthrough you need to save in a separate slot once you receive "a laundry sidequest". During this sidequest, you'll need to make a certain choice. Once you get the first out of the two achievements, reload your save and pick a different choice to earn the second one of them.
   
3. Once you reach the last location in the game (Everdawn Basin aka "the volcano location") and acquire the last skill (Boost Jump which allows you to do very high jumps above air currents), you can go back to all of the previous locations and clear them out. Depending on your playstyle, you can either just get all of the missing achievements OR collect absolutely everything there is to collect to achieve the maximum 117% of total completion.

If you like what you read and want to see more reviews like this one, please consider following my Steam curator :)

This review is a part of the Completionist's Point of View curator (the link will be added once the curator is up)

The Swapper is a unique puzzle game with an imaginative sci-fi setting, good-looking claymation graphics (the majority of objects you see in the game have first been made from real clay, 3D-scanned and then put into the game) and thought-provoking story. When I first completed it, I kept thinking about the questions it asks for a few following days. I have a lot of sentiment for this game (mainly because when I finished it 4 years ago, it was my first 100%-ed Steam game), but even when I try to look at it more objectively, I still see a great experience I'd recommend to every sci-fi/puzzle game fan.

The titular "swapper" is a device with an appearance similar to Valve's portal gun that you find at the start your adventure and use through the entirety of it. The swapper has two functions: creating clones of its owner and swapping their consciousness between the clones. This mechanic is a foundation both for the plot and for all of the game's puzzles.

The engrossing story is told mainly by text terminals and voiced radio transmissions as well as a few cutscenes.

The game is not a metroidvania, but its world is structured similarly to 2D Metroid games - you explore an abandoned space station divided into dozens of rooms connected by airlocks. Even though the space station is quite big, navigation is never a problem, since you always have a map of the explored area available upon pressing a button. All of the rooms containing puzzles are clearly marked and there is no item/ability requirement to solve them. All of the means and mechanics you need to know to solve every puzzle in the game are presented to you at the start of the game. The puzzles start out simple and have quite a linear difficulty curve throughout the entire game. The final ones are challenging but definitely doable if you spend some time on them. In my playthrough, I solved all but one of them on my own and only consulted a guide on the last one; but later I rather regretted doing it, since the solution was very logical and I could most likely have solved that puzzle on my own if I spent about 20 more minutes thinking about it.

My time to 100%: 7h
Estimated time to 100%: 3-10h (depends on puzzle-solving skills, guide usage and reading through/skipping the text terminals)

Warning: all 10 achievements are missable

The achievement design of this game is pretty much my only complaint. First of all, the game has a Point of No Return with no clear warning. If you progress past a certain point near the end of the game without getting all of the achievements first, you will need another playthrough to get the missing ones. Second of all, the achievements are rewarded for finding 10 secret terminals hidden behind fake walls (or ceilings) at various locations throughout the game. Even though I knew about it before I started playing, I only found 3 or 4 of the terminals on my own. Technically, it would be possible to find all of them without consulting a guide, but you'd need to be on a constant lookout for these fake walls, which is just not fun.

1. Play the game on your own until you reach the Point of No Return (PoNR). After acquiring all 124 of the collectible orbs, you'll get past the PoNR by pressing a special button you'll find on the space station near the end of the game. The button has a big label plate above it with an inscription suggesting that it's one of the final things you'll do on the station. You don't want to press this button before finding all of the secret terminals and getting all of the achievements. Here's an amazing, completely spoiler-free guide which will help with this task: From I to X / Achievement Guide & spoilerless hints. Depending on your playstyle, you can either search for the terminals on your own and only use a guide once you reach the PoNR or just use the guide from the start.
   
2. After getting all of the achievements, just finish the game to see the conclusion of the story.

If you like what you've read and want to see more reviews like this one, please consider following my Steam curator :)

The game has been unbeatable for at least a year and even though I wrote about it a few times on the discussions page, there is still no response from the dev

I started playing SMB back in March 2013. It was my first not free to play game on Steam.
Almost 7 years later I have 96h in-game time, "only" 85% of the achievements and I still go back to it from time to time and unlock another one I'm missing. Sometime in the future maybe I'll finally 100% it...

Truly amazing game!