Recent reviews by Luke

Smooth controls, omnidirectional movement, minor upgrades achievable as you play, but with minor exceptions this isn't like a Zelda or Metroid game where there are gating items to your progress. There are four themed regions surrounding a central safe town area to fight and explore your way through each with a boss at the end, which upon besting, you've mostly done what you needed to in that region. Afterward, you raise a pillar with the interaction button, and you should have collected the minimum of four triangular shaped "modules" you need to have for that region. There are hidden collectable "gearbits" that let you upgrade your abilities. The upgrades can be quite helpful but none of them are necessary to complete the game. There is no XP or leveling. You get stronger through the gear upgrades in part, but primarily through becoming a better player--your own actual skill and familiarity with the rooms and enemies. Each of the four areas feel labyrinthine at first, with the path forward often crossing itself, but with familiarity the regions are more like knotted ropes: the main path through them is ultimately still linear. The game is littered with secret areas though, and some optional tests of skill, which yeild outfits with beneficial effects, and gearbits which allow you to purchase minor upgrades. They are well placed, and none of them feel cheesy or unfair. A sense of fairness is dominant in the game, where there is little randomness to the attack patterns of enemies or the level of difficulty. Ultimately the game is very carefully balanced. Saving is done automatically in the background upon transitions to new areas, in safe areas where you cannot ruin your save file by saving at the wrong time. Should you die, and you will find you do, sometimes over and over, your last save point is not far away. This lets you beat on a particular crux repeatedly and indefinitely until you find the way to overcome it. At almost no point did I ever die and feel it wasn't a consequence of my own carelessness. And there is no difficulty I walked into I didn't immediately sense I could overcome it with practice, even if I had to die 50 times to finally get it right. So the game is challenging, but never ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and rewards persistence and attentiveness above all.

The game has a few weaknesses to know about. Some feel the fixed 30 FPS is very jarring. I personally find it less than ideal, but nothing like the problem others have made it out to be. There are also a number of areas still in the game where you might fall of a ledge when you think you are hugging a wall and loose one of your 5 health points unexpectedly. I would also consider the boss difficulties a point of imbalance, as there are minibosses noticably more difficult than some bosses (yeah, I'm talking about the guy with the scythe in particular) where this wouldn't be expected. The music is over all very good, but I felt I needed to turn it down relative to the sound effects. The game is borderless fullscreen windowed by default, which is pretty nice.

To me the game is fun enough to play I've put 40 hours into it hunting down every secret and am now playing through it again, so it's well worth the $20. The game is very beautiful, as you see in the screenshots and videos. It has a very solitary feel to it that reminds me personally of Metroid Prime--a sense of exploring a wild and not particularly safe wilderness one can get lost in. The relatively low key ambient soundtrack combined with the beautiful pixel art and engaging challenges yeild a sense of immersion in an adventure.

A fun little puzzle game, not unlike Minesweeper with a hex grid except that you get enough information in unique ways that if you put it together you never have to guess. The fun in the game is in deducing what must be true given the information you have to clear each puzzle grid and learning the patterns of reasoning you need, while being treated to relaxing ambient music which brings out your patient contemplative side. It's short and sweet, and you'll clear it just a couple hours.

I was surprised to find myself instantly engaged by the story of Winter as she follows her mentor, Cyrus, on a mission to lower tensions between countries on an alien world. Winter's lawfulness, idealism, and inexperience creates a strong contrast with Cyrus, who seems so accustomed to work as a mediator his practical and detached approach and cynical attitude to his work comes off to Winter as heartless and unprincipled. Your major choice in the story is how you choose for Winter to respond to this in the midst of a political crisis that transpires on this world.

The quality of writing in LTMC is its primary strength, bringing Winter and Cyrus's thoughts and feelings to life in a way that is touching, humorous, and fun. The background music is very complimentary and sometimes just stand-alone good. I really enjoyed my first playthrough, and at the real critical junction in the story I took a full day to mull it over before proceeding because it felt important enough.

While I enjoyed it, it isn't without some fairly significant weaknesses. Most notably, this episode in the planned three-part series is VERY short. There is really just the one really important decision in the game, although there are differences in the details of how you end up on the two different paths. You'll need to enjoy it for the different stories that are already written if you are to enjoy it because you just aren't going to decide much for yourself. When it comes to actually approaching the politics of the world, you have almost nothing to go on. The stubs of histories of the relevant countries you get in your data book make next to no sense at all. In most cases I had to just see what played out from choices because there just wasn't enough consistent information to make choices from, so that the data book basically fails in its one purpose. The contrived histories mirrors the contrived political crisis. It feels like a kid came up with it. It's only other information in it is a poorly written article about how nuclear bombs work, the shortcomings of which are also mirrored in the storyline.

Finally, the episode ends on a particularly weak note, where you switch to someone else's experience, and have their experience of hallway conversations that are just tedious and meaningless. I suppose this is supposed to be a lead-in to the next episode, but what a horribly dry lead in, as though switching to another character weren't already disruptive, and, frankly, a little more than what the story length qualifies it for. So, in the end, Learning to Manage Chaos comes off as a sort of disjointed combination of ideas and directions and input from people with varying talent that seems more like a demo than a finished work. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, and don't think of it as a bad experience for $5.

This game is a beautiful gem, and one of my favorites. I keep looking for others like it. I think I hear people complain most about the story writing, but I really liked it and felt it moved very naturally. The voice acting is very good overall and feels out of place only rarely and very forgiveably. Combat for a button mashing kind of game is pretty clever besides looking very good. It is a somewhat short game and leveling is pretty quick, but it is surprisingly well balanced. If you play normal difficulty you won't find many skill-based threats, just ones you have to learn how to approach to reliably (and then perhaps easily) overcome. I found tough difficulty on a second playthrough occasionally lead me want to grind for a little more experience or items and die several times at cruxes, but there are never bull---- challenges, not one. This is also true of almost every secret in the game, and really only one I think I wouldn't have figured out without a guide. One really fun aspect of the game is the Cirelian Trial challenges so don't pass them up. There are relatively few side quests and fewer that lead you much out of your way. I don't know that that's a good or bad thing as much as just the way the game is put together, but it does give it a good feeling of cohesion to the story and I think the developer chose a very good scope for the gameplay overall. I will offer the following critique that I felt the ending was just kind of emotionally a miss. I think the developer had lots of good pieces and didn't put them together very well at the end, but I'm semi-detached from most stories anyway so maybe you'll disagree. I do truly love this game though. The characters are adorable. I bought the soundtrack (it is a good soundtrack!) and listened to it for a day straight after playing the game the first time because it left me with a sense of loss and heartbreak kind of like the Portal games did. Anyway buy it. You'll like it!