Recent reviews by Nitekap

Persona 5 Tactica is a turn-based strategy game developed by fAtlus.

"Do I need to play Persona 5 first?"
Yes, the characters loosely refer to events in Persona 5, but more importantly, memos you can view outright spoil certain plot points in that game. Play Persona 5 Royal first. If you like turn-based strategy, chances are you like turn-based RPGs too.

"What about Persona 5 Strikers?"
This game takes place after Persona 5 but before Strikers. The DLC for this game, Repaint your Heart, takes place during Persona 5 sometime before the Casino Palace.

"Do I need context from any Persona game other than 5?"
No.

With that out of the way, onto the review.

It's like Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope. For those that haven't played that, your characters can move freely on the map within their reachable range, and won't settle in place until you select an action to perform. It has a cover system, but unlike most other games, cover provides protection even if you attack that unit from behind. Which is weird... but them's the rules.

Unique to this tactics game is the ability to knock down enemies to get another action. If an enemy is without cover, or has had their resistance broken through some other action, you can down them with another attack. The unit that downs them gets another action, which includes having their movable range updated. This is a really powerful move for getting around fast, and mirrors Persona 5's emphasis on quick battles.

As if that wasn't enough, the unit that gets the extra action also gets the ability to activate a "Triple Threat", this game's version of an All-Out Attack. This is incredibly powerful and dare I say overpowered. Just to give you an idea, maps that have conditions like "defeat all enemies within 8 turns" for extra rewards can often be cleared in 2 turns, and the only reason that it isn't 1 turn is because enemy reinforcements usually spawn on the 2nd turn, lol.

Like Persona 5, it's one of the easiest games in the genre. All-Out Attacks being what they are along with a pretty generous cover system makes this a cakewalk on Normal difficulty. I recommend Hard for anyone that has even a tiny bit of experience of tactics games. Hard difficulty also has friendly fire, which adds an extra layer to your actions, it's really good.

Not much. There are some "reach this area" battles, but most are just "defeat all enemies", which is fine in my opinion. There's much more variety in environment than enemies.

Sidequests explore a "carry object to area" victory condition, but it's never used in the main quest.

I found bosses pretty boring to be honest, and they tend to drag. Near the end of the game you have to fight all the bosses again, with no differences whatsoever. What a waste of time.

Pretty self contained. Two new characters, Erina and Toshiro, are introduced and we follow their journey along with the Phantom Thieves. They have pretty good banter too.

Like Persona 5 the plot kicks off with a One Piece-tier villain designed to grab your attention and slowly segues into a more serious tone as it goes on.

The Phantom Thieves themselves have no character arcs or developments to speak of really, they're mostly just there. Persona 5's cast was always the weakest of the modern Personas (in my humble onion), but still. Don't expect anything other than banter.

The dialogue can drag a bit as the characters have to reiterate how much they need to help those poor citizens, or have to denounce the bad guys yet again.

Other than that I found the story compelling enough.

There are some nice tracks as expected from a Persona game.
The hideout has a few themes it goes through that are pretty relaxing, the 3rd hideout in particular is lofi which is just what you need for a rainy day.

There are several tracks for battles. Got Your Tail is the one that will probably grab your attention first, as it's the first one that has Lyn singing. It's not Last Surprise or anything, but good enough.

The DLC has Quiet Storm, which contrary to its name has the loudest and stinkiest sound I've heard from a battle theme in a long while, which fits the backstreet alley neon punk theme of that DLC. Also has the rapper from Persona 3, Lotus Juice, in it so that's pretty sick.

The Velvet Room theme is back... unfortunately. I've learned to tolerate it, but I will never like it. Speaking of the Velvet Room...

This section is mostly a nitpick, so you can skip it if you want, I just had to complain somewhere...

A sub section within Music / Sound dedicated to a single character?
Yes, because Lavenza has some really annoying voice lines that play all the time while in the Velvet Room.

Linger even 2 seconds on the main screen?
"Your will is being tested, Trickster :>"
Viewing the compendium and selecting a persona to view its abilites because it doesn't display by default?
"Please read this! :>"
Ok, now I want to see that one.
"Please read this! :>"
Ok... maybe this one had the abilities I wanted?
"Please read this! :>"
Oh forget it! I'll just exit out of this whole thing!
*back*
"What would you like-"
*back*
"What would you-"
*back*
"What would you like to do? :>"

I honestly can't believe this. As if the Velvet Room wasn't annoying enough. It's almost funny.

This game is around 30 hours. Replayability comes from higher difficulties.

There are skill trees for each unit, but they simply aren't interesting enough to experiment with on subsequent playthroughs. Since your units can equip sub-personas, any unit can have any ability you want. Since it's a tactics game with unique units I had hoped to see some more unique abilities a la Triangle Strategy.

Despite all the mechanics it still lacks the depths of other turn-based strategy games out there. It's still a good time, and if you're a fan of Persona 5 and want to see more of its cast, you can't go wrong with this really.

"If a piece of horror media contains supernatural elements, it cannot be psychological horror."

If you agree with my statement and prefer psychological horror, you will be disappointed by this game. (You'll also be disappointed by a lot of other games on Steam that are more blatant with their supernatural content, yet claim to be psychological horror).

It's clear to me that this visual novel does contain elements of psychological horror, but because several things are straight up impossible (implausible at best) without supernatural elements, it just cannot be considered psychological horror in my opinion.

You can try to go for an interpretation that the main character is delusional to the point that it might as well all be a dream, or an unreliable narrator to the point that their viewpoint is meaningless, but then you've done the story a huge disservice in another way.

It hurts a bit to leave a negative review. Putting aside the fact that I think supernatural horror is uninteresting, the beginning of this VN is great. The slow descent into madness as you and your companions start to starve is sufficiently disturbing and filled with horror. Unfortunately it gets so weird by the end it's hard to keep track of what's actually happening and what's a result of a combination of delusions and supernatural stuff. There's also jumpscares, which is just cheap.

I like the Chompettes though. Cabbage is adorable, and I've recorded the soundbites "Cabbage~" and "HELLO~!!" for my ever-expanding random soundboard.

A family stands outside their home that has just burned to the ground. The dad, the son and the daughter each take turns retelling the events to the mom.

Each retelling is in a different game style: a beat-em-up, a visual novel and a point-and-click adventure.

None of the minigames are that fleshed out, but that's not the point. It's supposed to be a silly and fun distraction.
It's only 20 minutes, and it's free.

If you have some time to kill, why not?

As a fan of early Homestuck, I was intrigued by Sburb and desperately wished there was some way to play it myself.

This game is an attempt at making that happen, and it's an honest attempt.
But I can't recommend this at this stage. It is EARLY (early) early access. Here's a list of things (not) included:

• Key rebinds
  Not possible. Controls aren't even displayed anywhere, you have to read a Steam guide for them + some of the controls are not mentioned.
  
  
• Camera
  Rotation angle is limited to 180 degrees. This can make it impossible to see certain objects and items on the ground. If the Sylladex didn't have an auto-pickup option, both of my runs would've ended before even getting into The Medium (for those who don't know, this is basically 2 minutes into the game).
  
  Walls don't lower their opacity when you're behind them either (unless you're inside a room), which means rotating your camera when you're in front of your house swings the camera around to the back of your house where you see nothing but your house.
  
  
• Strife deck[mspaintadventures.fandom.com]
  Your strife specibus is permanently locked to the first 4 kinds you put into the deck.
  If you're used to dragging items onto your character to put them into your Sylladex, you'll be surprised when the items go into your Strife deck instead and permanently lock your weapon options. No way to undo at this stage.
  
  
• Sylladex[mspaintadventures.fandom.com]
  This is the term for your inventory in Homestuck. It's always equipped with a Fetch Modus, which is how your items interact with your inventory. I liked how they powered down Array (which is the best modus outside of Wallet in the comic) by making it only hold 4 items. Queue holds more items, but you can only access the item you first put into your inventory.
  
  The problem is that there are so many items in this game, and 4-8 slots just don't cut it for dungeon crawling. Still one of the best parts of this project, I look forward to more Fetch Modi being added.
  
  
• Item creation
  The most exciting part of Sburb in my opinion, you can through several steps combine two items into a new item possessing the features. The problem is the clutter you have to go through to do this. You need to punch item cards to use them in the creation process, this means you lose the item until you create a copy using the punched card. You can combine new items further to alter them even more. After a while your house will be a mess of punched cards lying everywhere. Chests don't have enough space to make storage this way practical.
  
  
• Kernelsprite[mspaintadventures.fandom.com]
  The kernelsprite is always in the way. It constantly prevents you from clicking either the left or right side of you.
  
  
• Building
  The revise tool, which lets you create floors and walls, don't match the cursor's location. You always have to click the tile underneath the tile you actually want to interact with. The floor and wall placement fails unless you start drawing over an already placed tile. The deploy menu doesn't sort stuff into categories. Even in the huge list things aren't ordered by type. You can find a few stairs early on in the list and still find a couple more further down it. There are no tooltips for items. Icons are small so it's hard to see what it is and most objects are white making this even harder.
  
  Enemies always spawn on new platforms you build, forcing you to leave building mode to deal with them. This makes building stairs towards the portals in the sky more cumbersome than it already is.
  
  
• Portals
  There are portals in the sky that lead to the explorable part of your "Land of X and Y". I only played solo, but I imagine portals further up lead to other players' sessions and that's how you join up.
  The 3 portals I climbed my way to only lead to different parts of my Land, which wasn't very exciting.
  
  
• Land of X and Y
  The explorable land, randomly generated where X and Y are replaced with some nouns. This alters the look and colors of the land along with the structures generated, but it is mainly just a large wasteland with a few things dotting the otherwise barren landscape. NPCs are stationary and hug the walls of their houses, making their sprites clip into them. You can walk while being in a conversation. Dungeons are mainly just rooms with groups of enemies inside them.

With 5 hours I think I gave this game a real honest shot.
This is a passion project, and I don't mean to insult what is here, but I just can't play it because of all the little annoyances, and I can't recommend it to anyone but the diehardest Homestuck fans either.

The lobby music is a real bop though.

Dicey Dungeons is a deckbuilding dungeon crawler created by Terry Cavanagh.
It (usually) strikes a fair balance between skill and luck. More on that (usually) later.

The game is divided into episodes. Each character has 6 episodes in the base game, 1 episode in the free Reunion DLC, and three of the characters has 1 episode in the free Halloween Special, making for a grand total of 45 episodes. Thanks to the random elements, the episodes have good replayability however, and I'll definitely see myself replaying some of my favourites in the future.

For each episode you're tasked with making it through a dungeon and defeating a boss at the end. A dungeon normally consists of 5 normal floors and 1 boss floor. The goal on each floor is to reach the hatch leading down to the next floor. In your way are enemies which you need to defeat in battle in order to get past.

You get experience from defeating enemies, and after getting enough you go up a level.
Because of this, even if some enemies are not blocking you from reaching the hatch, you might go and fight them anyway. You need to defeat every single enemy in order to be max level at the boss. This is not a necessity, but (usually) a good idea. More on that (usually) later.

You also gain coins from battles which you can use to buy new equipment from shops you find throughout the dungeon. You also encounter chests which contain random new equipment, and anvils which you can use to upgrade a piece of equipment to a more powerful version, amongst some other surprises.

Enemies are fought one on one.
Your turn begins with rolling the number of dice your character has. You then put those dice on your equipment cards to play them. Some equipment need even or odd numbers to be played, some can only use a maximum of 4, a minimum of 3, etc.

After you've done everything you want, you give the turn over to the enemy, which then proceeds with the same procedure using their equipment and dice. This goes on until either you or the enemy is dead.

Each of the characters enter the game show Dicey Dungeons hosted by Lady Luck, the personification of luck and fate, in order to win their heart's desire. If they survive a trip through the dungeons they get to spin a wheel and get a chance at winning their prize!

Things start to become more and more suspicious as you keep playing though. How can the wheel keep landing on the one slice that's a dud? What's with the weird comments from Lady Luck that you'll make a fine minion? I think you see where this is going.

I particularily like how all the enemies you fight are actually previous contestants that gave up on winning and resigned to their fate, and most of them have a bio in the bestiary where you can read what their reason for entering the dungeon was.

And yes, I like the underdog stories. Challenging Lady Luck to a game of dice? There's just no way you can win, right?

This game's soundtrack is composed by Chipzel, who has made some bangin' remixes of the Crypt of the Necrodancer soundtrack before this.

The soundtrack is for the most part a fusion of jazz and chiptune, and really good.
Some battle music samples: Fighting Chance, Tempting Fate, and a personal favourite, Step Right Up.
The Reunion DLC's battle themes are all bangers as well.

With the story setting and deck buildery and random generation dungeonry, a question that always pops up is "how much luck is too much luck?"

This game is fair: the rolls for you and the enemy are completely random with the exception of the final boss (I think you can guess who and why).

But people are not good with probabilities in general. Most also tend to forget the times luck was in their favour. Bad luck is more easily remembered since they can cost you your run on floor 4 or 5, which is far enough into a run to make you say "Dungeon Crawler? More like Dungeon Crawling in My Skin."

The game allows you to mitigate the luck element for yourself through some dice manipulation equipment however. There's for example Lockpick, which splits a die into two dice, and Spatula, which flips the die upside down, turning a 1 into a 6 for example. Careful use of these equipments can (usually) turn a bad situation into a good one. More on that (usually) later.

Still, in the words of a certain starfleet captain:
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose."

You'll have to ask yourself if you can deal with the fact that you'll lose some runs to bad luck.

One of the characters' episodes (Witch's Elimination Round), is brutal and more luck-dependent than most episodes. In the Elimination Rounds, enemies have inflated health and UPGRADED equipment. The Witch has a certain gimmick that needs some setup in order to pay off, but enemies tend to oblitirate you before you can finish if they get have luck on their side. She can also be crippled early on by bad dice rolls. Runs can and will end on floor 1 sometimes.

I think this episode needs more powerful equipment, or more chests early on in order to smooth out the giant spike in difficulty. It took me 20 runs to win, but I've seen some poor bastards take upwards 150 runs before a victory. Of course, they might not have played optimally, but still.

A great game, if you can deal with Lady Luck in several senses.

My playtime of 66 hours involves beating all 45 episodes and getting all the achievements (which involved replaying some episodes). The average dungeon crawl took around 35 minutes.

I didn't even talk about the art or enemy design, but these are also very good.
Baby Squid is a Beautiful Cinnamon Roll Too Good For This World, Too Pure™

Oh right, I've opened up to these types of games thanks to Dicey Dungeons.
I thought I didn't like deck builders, but I was happy to be proven wrong.

If you're in the same boat, I hope you give this one a try.
It might just change your mind!

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is the complete duology made from the two games The Great Ace Attorney: Adventures and The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve, both visual novels developed and published by CAPCOM.

It follows the adventures of Ryuuichi Naruhodo's (Phoenix Wright's) ancestor, Ryunosuke Naruhodo, as he, by a weird twist of fate, ends up becoming a practising defence lawyer in the late 19th century London.

My favourite character from this game is Sōseki Natsume[en.wikipedia.org](yes, he's based on a real person). Because of this, all subheaders in this review will be four-word alliterations. (I've tried to underline the most significant word for the subheader. Don't be too hard on me, I tried my best.)

I'll also be referring to "the original trilogy" in this review, by which I mean the Phoenix Wright games.

I'll not speak much on the story, but one thing right of the bat: Every case ties into the overarching plot. There are no "filler" cases like in the original trilogy. Yes, even the tutorial cases have some significance.

In typical Ace Attorney fashion, many cases are ridiculously convoluted but the momentum of the courtroom drama tends to make you forget about it, which is good of course. They're not meant to hold under heavy scrutiny, they're roller coaster rides that you go on for the thrill.

This game respects its setting though. Most of the time. For example:
In one case, a friend of Ryunosuke's develops a chemical compound that makes blood change color depending on "whose it is". My initial response was "surely a 19th century court won't accept that as evidence", and it didn't! Coming from the final case of the original trilogy, this surprised me in a good way.

As previously mentioned, this is a visual novel. Most of this game is spent reading. There are a few things in place to spice it up however.

This game is divided into 10 episodes (5 each for GAA and GAA2), and with the exception of 3 episodes, they have the same structure: one or more investigation phases and one or more trial phases.

In the investigation phase you talk to people and investigate the crime scene to build your case for the trial phase. While this part may seem free-roam, it's actually pretty heavily on rails, and the game will not move on to the trial without you having all the evidence you need (thank goodness).

To break up the investigation phase this game has the Logic and Reasoning Spectacular (also known as the Dance of Deduction) minigame where Ryunosuke helps the character Herlock Sholmes figure out some sort of truth using the environment and evidence. This is a fun visual spectacle if nothing else.

In the trial phase you listen to formal witness testimony and point out contradictions in their statements using evidence. You can press their statements to reveal new information or alter their testimony.

Unlike earlier Ace Attorney entries, multiple witnesses can be in the stand at the same time. Another witness may react to the currently speaking witness' statement, which you can then pursue to gather even more information.

Also new to this entry is the Summation Examination game, in which you try to convince the jury (who have all voted your client guilty) why they should allow the trial to continue. This involves selecting two different jurors and pitting them against each other for some reason, usually because their statements contradict.

The original Ace Attorney trilogy comprised of the first visual novels I ever read. I've since read a lot of different ones, and I've realised that Ace Attorney can be quite inconvenient to maneuver at times.

I'll go over a few good and bad things:

Even with "skip read text" on, the text goes by so slow. The reason for this is because Ace Attorney games alter text speed and pauses to give an impression of how the speaker is saying their lines. It's not worth it. There is also no skip button, a feature found in even the oldest visual novels out there.

This is at its worst during Herlock Sholmes' deductions, which take FOREVER to get through. They first have you read through his deduction, then you have to go through them AGAIN to correct his mistakes.

This game's soundtrack is stellar. It uses significantly more classic instruments compared to the original trilogy's more electronic soundtrack, which is fitting considering the game's setting.

I'm particularily partial to the Cross-Examination theme, which I consider the best in the series. Compare the Moderato version, which is played during most witness testimony to the Allegro version, which is usually played during the final critical testimony you have to work with.

There are many more good ones, but I'll put London as my last example. It really reminds me of a puzzle.

Steam Achievements for this title are tied to in-game "accolades". Some are gotten by just playing, for others you need to do certain things during your playthrough. The window of opportunity for some of there are as short as one dialog box, and if you miss one you have to either reload a save or start the episode all over again. Because of the aformentioned lack of skip mode, this is beyond tedious and I'll never see myself doing it. Use a guide if you desperately want all accolades in one go.

There are a few surprises thrown in, which are more likely to get you if you're an old fan.
There's for example a moment where you have to pursue a witness while another one is speaking, even though you have no interface indication that you can do so. You instead have to realise you have to do it based on other factors. This was great! I personally wished you had to use the new courtroom mechanics more, and in even more unorthodox ways.

It may have sounded like a lot of negatives, but this is a really good visual novel aside from the things I've mentioned. It clearly respects itself and its characters more than, say, Spirit of Justice.

It's also a step in the right direction for the future of Ace Attorney (if there is still a future that is).
I love Phoenix, Edgeworth and Maya as much as the next guy, but this visual novel is a prime example of what this series needed: new characters and new stories.

If you've never read a visual novel before this is a great entry point to the medium. It has more gameplay than normal visual novels, so you'll be eased into the experience! You'll also not miss the normal visual novel conveniences like skip mode and the text scrolling issue I've mentioned.

For returning fans I say: This game is for you. It's new, it's fresh, and it's Ace Attorney.

Eastward is a text-heavy, story-driven, action-adventure game.

When I say 'text-heavy' I mean it. I've seen users unironically say that this should be tagged as a visual novel. While I don't share that sentiment, I can not deny how much dialogue is in this game.

For me, this game is just barely a recommend. This review is more like an essay/tangent, so skip to "Closing Thoughts" after reading "Gameplay" if you're not interested in all that.

You play as John, a dopey-looking guy (if you exclude his mugshot in which he looks positively badass) who lives his life as a digger in the underground town of Potcrock Isle. An undefined amount of time before the game begins, John finds a girl during one of his excavations who he names Sam. They start living together as a sort of family, with John becoming Sam's guardian.

The game starts off with some daily life until stuff happens which kicks off the adventure. You get to follow John and Sam's adventure in which they meet a wide variety of people and visit several interesting places.

The game is devided into "story" areas where you can talk to NPCs and interact with the world, and "dungeon-esque" areas where you fight enemies and solve puzzles. These can overlap, but rarely do so.

In the dungeon areas you can switch between John and Sam with the tap of a button. John does the physical fighting and other heavy-lifting while Sam supports with her strange powers. You can also split up and control John and Sam seperately, a feature used for puzzles. John and Sam get additional equipment/abilities as the game progresses. Dungeons have several semi-hidden chests with extra goodies, such as gear parts, that you use to upgrade John's weapons. This made the loot feel worth going after and made finding these very fun.

There's a small cooking part of the game in which you pick a few ingredients and make food that you can use for healing and additional effects. Unlike most cooking systems, there is no general "mistake" food you can make. All "unknown recipes" are actual food items that you can discover by experimenting. This made cooking something actually fun. I was surprised by this.

The other half of the game is the NPCs and the world you interact with. Not a single NPC sprite is reused for two characters. There's an absurd amount of care put into the world and the characters, and when you're not bashing enemies in dungeons, you'll be experiencing this world.

There's a game within this game called Earth Born that you can play in certain shops. This is a simple turn-based RPG in which you go on a quest to slay the Demon King.

You have 7 days to power up your party and collect items and gear before you take him on. When you die, your party resets to level 1 and you lose all your items. The meta game is about finding a route and strategy on which places to visit in order to get the most powerful party within the 7 days.

Earth Born isn't the main selling point of Eastward or anything, but I found it to be a fun distraction. It's more fun than Eastward itself in some aspects, which is very funny to me.

This game is missable item galore. To echo my TitS review:
"Are you a completionist? Stay away. STAY AWAY!"

Locations are one-off and are not able to be revisited. This includes dungeons which have hidden chests. Shops have ingredients that are also missable and by extension that makes recipies and dishes missable. Some of Sam's ABILITIES are missable. Side-quests are missable. Do I need to keep going?

I managed to keep my completionist demon locked away for this game, but I put this section here because I know how this can ruin a game for some people (including myself most of the time).

The story is slow-paced and takes a while to get going. Even when it does, some parts feel like padding. Despite this though, there were a few hooks that kept me interested. What was Sam doing deep underground, encased in that orange cocoon? Why does she have strange powers? Who is the image of herself she keeps seeing? Will John ever say anything? Chapter 2 spoilers: What is the miasma? What is the purpose of the freaky human lab?

Interesting things indeed, and good questions! Then when I got to the ending I went: "Ah. It's one of those stories."

By which I mean that while some of the questions you accumulate indeed have answers, most of them don't. It really feels like mystery for the sake of mystery. There are no answers.

I also didn't get attached to any of the characters other than John and Sam, which is something I see as a failure of the writing. There were clearly attempts at endearing certain characters to the player, but something about the writing and pacing made this not work.

I say I got attached to John and Sam, but that's mostly by virtue of playing as them for literally the whole game. John is already down a few points by being a silent protagonist who rarely emotes. The moments where you actually get to see John express any kind of emotion are so rare they can be counted on one hand, and even then they are so subtle you can miss them if you look away for even a second. Sam on the other hand, is a bright and cheerful girl who openly expresses her feelings and thoughts whenever she gets the impulse to do so. When no other NPC is available to do the talking, she's the one that does it.

I liked their relationship, but not enough was done with it. There are several hints that John are a bit clueless about how to care for a child. Minor chapter 3 spoilers: For example, Sam is completely barefoot for the first 3 chapters. Another character gives her red boots to wear at this point, which she exitedly runs up to John to show off. "John! John! Look John, boots!" John awkwardly looks off to the side and scratches his head. It hadn't even crossed his mind that he should've given her some shoes. She's been running around underground on cold hard rocks with her bare feet. I'd like to think he feels some shame. He also brings her into dungeons which crawl with dangerous monsters, and leaves her out of sight on several occasions.

But he gave her a shirt to wear, keeps her well-fed and rested, and gives her piggyback rides when she's tuckered out. He's not cruel, just clueless. On Sam's end, it's clear that she's fond of John. She doesn't blame him for anything and is his biggest fan.

I found their relationship rather endearing, which is why it's such a pity it's not focused on. The journey should've been about them settling into their relationship in addition to the overarching plot. This would've also made the ending parts even better.

The final panel of the game would've been a perfect opportunity for John to break his silent protagonist trope as well.

I feel like I'd wrong this game if I didn't bring this up. This is the best part of Eastward. It has some of the best pixel art I've ever seen. Towns are intricately drawn and unique-looking. As previously mentioned, not a single NPC is reused, they are all unique. Animations are fluid and abundant. Lighting is used to great effect. Truly, an absurd amount of work has gone into this part of the game, and I can't deny how good it looks.

I had fun, but several things bog this game down. Pacing that's mostly slow but sometimes is all over the place, filler sidequests that are actually the main quest, missables, filler CHAPTERS, hit and miss writing, story with very few answers, missables...

If you like a slow-paced story with an interesting world to learn about, talking to NPCs, and a dash of beat-em up style fighting and puzzle-solving, you'll probably have a good time.

If you're in it for the action-adventure gameplay, dislike long dialogues/cutscenes and MISSABLES, you'll have a terrible time.

Patrick's Parabox is a sokoban-type puzzle game where blocks can be entered and house puzzles within puzzles. The game is heavily inspired by Sokosoko by juner.

This game is an idea taken to its logical conclusion, with the idea being "blocks are also rooms that can be entered".

If you've played Sokoban, you know what to expect. You need to push blocks onto specified marked squares, then go and stand your character on the goal square to win a level. The twist put on it, as previously mentioned, is that the blocks you push can sometimes be entered and house a puzzle within them.

Perhaps a level requires two blocks to win, but theres only one block in the level. You can enter the block that exists however, and inside it you find the second block you need. You can extract it from this block and suddenly you have all the blocks you need to finish the level.

This quickly get more complicated as you come across blocks that are the level you're currently playing, and exiting the level border makes you exit the level block inside the level you're in.

Or maybe you try to enter a block as you enter the same block as you enter the same block as you enter the same block as you-

Well, you get the picture. The game has paradoxes more than accounted for however, and it will not let you forget that.

This game is very elegant. It has a few clearly defined rules, and does a lot with them.
It pushes its idea beyond what you expect as a player, which reminds me of Baba is You.
It's mildly challenging, nowhere near the hair-tearing difficulty that for example Baba is You can throw your way. Patrick's Parabox also knows when to stop, which is something I can respect in the current gaming landscape where things seem to be designed to grab ahold of you and do nothing but waste your time.

There are of course some puzzles I did not like. Most of them were puzzles that didn't make use of the main gimmick at all, or in a way that was plain uninteresting. A few ideas were recycled several times, the small tweaks were not enough to make them interesting.

The puzzles I didn't like were a clear minority though!

My playtime as of this review is the time it took to do everything. I completed this game in two sittings.
Might seem short, but if you like block-pushing games, you're doing yourself a disservice if you skip Patrick's Parabox.

It's one of the best in the genre.

Bomb Club Deluxe, originally released as simply Bomb Club for iOS and Android devices, is a puzzle game about causing a chain reaction of exploding bombs. Despite being a mobile game originally, it looks and plays well on PC. Don't let the mobile game origins push you away.

Typically a level is made out of some ground and a few pre-placed bombs. You're given a level-specific inventory of bombs to use, and your task is to place those bombs so all bombs in the level are gone when the chain-reaction finishes. Most levels feature optional fireworks, and including them in the chain reaction increases your score. You get a medal based on your score, bronze, silver or gold.

There are a lot of different bombs that explode in different ways, and making use of their unique explosions and effects is what this game is all about. In addition to different bombs, there are hats you can place on bombs that give them an additional effect. All this put together makes for some interesting puzzles.

Aside from the default levels, there are other level types that task you with doing something in addition to blowing up all the bombs.

• Landscaping
  These levels are like normal levels, except you can reshape the ground.
  
• Bomb party
  These levels require you to use your whole inventory (which is usually a hindrance to your goal, since fewer bombs = less bombs needed to blow up to win)
  
• Color splash
  Features color bombs that increase your score instead of fireworks.
  
• Mega bomb
  Features one or more mega bombs that require being hit several times in order to blow up.
  
• Bomb stack
  These levels use the same layout with increasingly complicated bomb placements, and your score increases with each iteration you complete.
  
• Time attack
  Speed rounds where your only task is to find which bomb you should detonate in order to blow all of them up. Score is based on how many levels you complete within the time limit.

There is a story in this game, but it takes a clear backseat to the puzzles, which is the way it should be. Basically, four friends: Ian, Jon, Maggie and Blake are bomb enthusiasts and have created the Bomb Club where they build and share bomb ideas and blow bombs up for fun.

Society frowns upon the usage of explosives (what a surprise), making their activities within the club a sort of legal grey area.

The club is threatened when Bomberbot, a robot of unknown origin, steals the club's bombs and scatters them all over the lands. They must now clear all the bombs and stop Bomberbot. There is a twist at the end, which is not too special but fun enough for a game like this.

The characters play off each other well. Ian is a no-nonsense, know-it all, stickler for rules kind of guy, Jon is the token book dumb, Maggie is cheerful but down to earth, and Blake is absolutely CRAZY about explosions and has no regard for her own safety.

At times I thought they were a bit too mean to Jon. Jokes about him mainly revolve around his lack of understanding and "lesser" intelligence. He does have a few moments where he gets back at Ian and Maggie though, so this was fine.

Bomb Club Deluxe starts really slow. Judging by the achievements, more than half the players make it out of the Bomb Club's workshop at least, but after that most interest seems to drop off.

It takes a long time for Bomb Club Deluxe to start challenging you, and some of the most interesting bombs take a while to show up as well.

I still had a good time just making my way through the world map and doing the puzzles even if they were simple. The world map is laid out in a way that make it seem free-roam, but if you carefully check some door requirements you'll find that it's pretty linear. This is fine, just the impression of an open map made it more interesting to me.

Puzzles only become head-scratchers in the bonus campaign which you reach after defeating Bomberbot. Your reward for beating the bonus campaign (other than achievements) is getting to see Ian, Jon, Maggie and Blake without their helmets on. As far as in-game rewards go, I liked this. Avoid looking at steam community stuff if you don't want to spoil this for yourself.

The only level type I didn't like was Time attack. Being fast in a puzzle game goes against why I play them, and most of Time attack levels devolve into learning the bomb patterns, restarting once you know them, and just blaze through them all in one clean run.

A solid puzzle game. Workshop and user levels could be good for a game like this, but it's completely fine as it is. Most ideas are thoroughly explored through the main and bonus campaigns.

Like mentioned earlier, this game has a slow start:
Stick with it until you find all bomb types in the second area.
If you still don't find it fun after that, then the game might not be for you.

Hope you give it a shot!

This might sound negative, but I feel that I have to say this first and foremost.

tERRORbane is not a traditional old-school RPG or JRPG with a bug/glitch gimmick.
tERRORbane presents itself as an RPG.

There's a difference.

It's more of an adventure game. Sure, there are RPG battles, but they are heavily scripted to only allow for certain options, with two chapters of the game having a battle system that more or less consists of minigames. You'll go through a lot of different genres in this game, some of which may not be your favourite. One fight is a bullet hell shooter for example.

Tags are user-defined. Remember this when you read them. The description of the game never once mentions you'll be playing an RPG.

With that out of the way, what is tERRORbane?

tERRORbane has you become a playtester for Terrorbane, a game made by a guy only ever referred to as the Developer or the Dev. He'll give you a feature list where he expects you to write down what you liked about the game, but you quickly turn it into a bug list instead. You'll get to explore and interact with an RPG world, usually while the Developer comments on your antics. 

The main objective is to fill your bug list in order to show the Developer that his game is broken. You don't need to find all bugs, but you need to find a fair number of them. This means you'll do several playthroughs in order to reach the true ending. Some paths are vastly different from others though, so I didn't find myself bored doing this.

The Dev is not the only character you interact with that is "real" by the way. Several characters in Terrorbane, if not all of them, are fully aware that they are inside a game, they know what sprites and code are, and they know of the Developer too. This immediately made the game more interesting to me.

Like previously mentioned, you'll go through a lot of different genres, with RPG being more or less a coat of paint. For spoiler reasons I don't want to reveal more than I already have, but at least know that you'll never be playing a truly traditional turn-based RPG.
The only thing I will say that if you know you have slow reaction times, you might have trouble with some parts of this game.

Having played through this game several times in order to make a guide (my playtime reflects this, tERRORbane does not have 45 hours of content), I can say for sure that this game is quite alright in the "not-wasting-your-time" department. There are some parts that are still bad though. Once you've seen the ending once you unlock the WARP ZONE, which lets you revisit parts of the game quicker. Some parts, like The Resistance, have a distinct lack of shortcuts, and 20XX A.D. has a shortcut you can't even use most of the time because some bugs rely on certain choices you have to make before that shortcut. This has been partially addressed by the devs with the addition of a new shortcut. The latter complaint is still true though.

Moving on, there are some really great ideas to be found in this game.

During some parts of the game you'll wield a weapon known as the Eversteel of the Eternity. The in-game story ability of this sword is its ability to cleave the fabric of reality. Naturally, it is able to cleave the fabric of the game instead and allow you to edit object parameters. One of my favorite moments is if you get a game over against the final boss, you can use the Eversteel on the game over screen and change it so the final boss has a game over instead. This is in my opinion almost on par with some twists from the Bravely series. I can only imagine what this could've been if it had been an actual RPG... instead it's not dwelt on for long and mostly used for comedic effect. Maybe there's merit in that too.

The whole thing feels like a collection of ideas turned into a game, which is probably intentional:

The Developer comes across as very arrogant and full of himself, but I never once disliked the guy. During the confrontation with him in the end it seemed like the game was expecting me to dislike him, which didn't produce the intended effect.

If you've ever developed a game or created something that will be scrutinized by others, you'll probably be more likely to sympathise with the Dev. It's easy to see he's an earnest guy that is easily inspired but has a hard time reigning himself in. I've created games like this, where ideas are built upon ideas until they're an incoherent mess. It's an easy trap to fall into while making games, which makes the Developer feel like a very genuine person... surely because the actual developer of this game has some experience on the matter.

His english voice actor also does a great job delivering his lines, which no doubt helped me relate to this character even more.

With the game characters being aware of what they are (including the final boss) and your continuous banter with the Developer, I'm sure you can extrapolate which direction this game might be going in for the final confrontation. The true ending does the job.
It's a little short, but it's a good way to end the game.

I'm not certain I agree with the final message 100% though. I will not elaborate on it here, play it for yourself if you're interested.

I hope I've written enough for you to make that call.