Recent reviews by BabyCharmander

I have never played a game that yanked me right back to being ten years old and playing games like Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie for the first time like this game did. It captures the N64 vibes perfectly, down to the graphics, the dreamy atmosphere, and the way it occasionally hits that feeling of being incredibly unnerving and leaving you unsure of what to expect. There's even some mysteries like the ones you'd find in those old games that leave you wondering.

It stands out from those old games though by having a more involved story. It's nothing groundbreaking--not near to the narrative level of something like, say, Psychonauts--but there's little bits of lore you slowly pick up throughout the game, and as you piece them together, it paints a pretty good picture of the game's world and history. It's really satisfying being able to link the pieces together. It also stands out in that there's no combat--and, honestly, the game does so well without it that I didn't even think of the fact that there wasn't any until after I'd beaten the game and saw someone else bring it up.

I also adore how much this game rewards exploration, especially in the late- and post-game. There's a lot to discover--stuff that's not required for completion, but that's really nifty to find regardless.

The game is not perfect--there's a few puzzles I struggled with and on a few occasions the controls got a bit fiddly--but they did little to detract from the overall experience.

If you enjoyed old N64 or PS1-style collect-a-thon platformers, you NEED to play this game. At the time of my writing this it's on sale for about $8 USD and it's well worth it. It's short, sweet, and a great experience.

Fun little horror game that partially turns into a comedy if you have certain features disabled on your computer. I was highly amused when the game tried to doxx me and failed spectacularly.

My only complaint was that the game will NOT let you switch to another window if it’s open. I’m not sure if that’s an intentional part of the design but it was annoying either way.

Otherwise it’s a fun, short experience.

I stopped playing this game for nearly two years because I was about to fight a boss and I was scared of losing one of my Abomis. I finally worked up the guts to play again and managed to beat the boss, only to lose my very first Abomi in the next area. I screamed at my computer in absolute horror and then sat in dead silence, staring at my screen for several minutes. My entire team mourned. One of my Abomis became traumatized.

But now I feel like I must keep playing and win this, because it's what my first Abomi would have wanted.

(Seriously if you like mongames and/or roguelikes and/or games that have the ability to punch you in the gut so hard you don't know what to do with yourself, you should play this.)

You play as a snail with other people who are also playing as snails. What more could you want?

In seriousness, this is a charming, simple game run by a very dedicated dev who listens to the community and, at the time of my writing this, is constantly updating the game.

I found something very interesting in the game, but was struggling to investigate due to a glitch. I hopped onto the Discord server and mentioned it (and saw it had been mentioned by others), and the exact same day, an update was pushed that fixed the glitch.

Another praise I can give is that even though this is an online game, there is no in-game text or voice chat, which prevents toxicity. There’s a few simple means of communication and the dev is working on adding more, and has also said that they have no plans for voice/text chat.

I don’t think this game is for everyone, but if you like snails and/or if you want a relaxing, silly, and slow experience, then it’s definitely worth a go.

Opened the game and started character creation. The character models are bizarrely proportioned, like an orangutan, but I could overlook that if the game was good.

Went to choose a class. Was having issues reading the text describing the class, as the devs made the bizarre decision to make the text fade into the background. But, okay, it's a new game. I can overlook new game weirdness for now.

But... then I looked at the images that accompanied the different classes. They seemed... weirdly detailed. Lots of random bits of detail that didn't need to be there. Then I noticed... one of the figures didn't have any fingers on one of his hands.

Something struck me, and I began checking each class image one by one. Some of the images were in completely different styles. Many had bits of armor that made no sense. An archer had a bundle of sticks tied to their back rather than a quiver of arrows. Another archer had an arrow merged with his bow. One mage had seven fingers.

Instead of employing actual artists, the devs used AI-generated images for their art.

I closed the game and uninstalled immediately.

If they can't be bothered to hire an actual artist, I can't bother to play the game.

Jack Black reached through the screen and punched me directly in the heart and made me cry.

100/10

In all seriousness this is the absolute best game I have played in several years. The story and writing and characters are all incredible and genuinely did make me cry, the graphics are beautiful, the music is awesome, and 102%ing the game was a blast and I fully plan to do it again.

I always liked Runescape's skills system. This whole game is just that, but as an idle game. Idle games can get dull but this one has enough stuff to do to make it entertaining.

If you like idle games and you like skill systems that build off of each other, I definitely recommend this. If you're not sure, you can try it out for free on mobile or desktop, but there are advantages to buying it on Steam (not just achievements--there are also items that will only work when the game is NOT on idle (so you would have to either have the game open on your phone, or have the tab active on your browser) and having the game in its own window just makes that more convenient). You can also save to the cloud so that you can play the game for a while on Steam, then switch to your phone when you have to go somewhere. Very nice.

I put a few hundred hours into the previous game, and I can tell I'll probably be putting more into this one. (The hours it shows here aren't fully accurate, since I also got the game on mobile and have been playing the same file on both PC and mobile via a cloud save system.) I'm not even done with the main story yet and I'm already really enjoying myself.

This is a fantastic monster-catching game with an interesting, deep battle system, a lot of cool monsters, and plenty of fun mechanics. Some of the monster designs have improved since the previous game (I love the updated overworld sprites!) and a lot of mechanics have been polished. No more annoying energy system! No more gene strength system that makes it stupidly difficult to balance your team! Also you can actually see the monsters' HP and MP bars if you fight them enough, which is fantastic.

One of the bigger improvements is that leveling up is a lot slower than the previous game. That doesn't sound like an improvement, but let me tell you, leveling up once in this game feels a lot more satisfying than gaining 25 levels in the previous game. You can still level up indefinitely--it just feels more rewarding to do so.

If you enjoyed either of the previous games, get this one. If you haven't played the previous games, don't worry--the game is light on story so you don't need to worry about the previous ones.

If you are a fan at all of monster-catching games, absolutely give this one a try.

I went in expecting a somewhat dark, short game about cute robots, and that’s what I got.

I’ve seen Rumu compared to Gone Home, though I feel like more things are spelled out to you in this game than in Gone Home. Not in a bad way—you have an AI, SABRINA, that’s constantly talking to you throughout the game, so the way the story is told doesn’t feel unnatural. Just different from Gone Home.

There’s a few parts of the story that I predicted going in, but it’s the “hows” of them that I didn’t see coming. The game makes you doubt yourself and what you’re seeing and hearing, so getting to see what parts of my suspicions were correct was a fun experience.

The characters are great. The humans feel real, Rumu is adorable, and SABRINA... well, I’ll let you figure out her for yourself.

Once or twice I felt like the game was channeling Portal/Portal 2, but not in a way that felt like it was ripping off. The closest thing was a part of the soundtrack that sounded eerily similar to “Ghost of Rattmann...”

Gameplay wise, everything’s pretty simple. It’s mostly exploration with a handful of easy puzzles. The focus is more on the story than anything else. The only problems I had were that once or twice, Rumu got stuck in weird places, but I either escaped by mashing the WASD buttons, or hitting the “reset room” option on the menu (which didn’t mess up my progress at all, thankfully).

Replay value depends entirely on whether or not you’re the kind of person who likes to get all the achievements and/or re-experience the story. (EDIT: Though a number of the achievements are, sadly, bugged, and as of 3/1/19 have not been fixed. You can SOMETIMES get them, but not always, even if you've done everything they require, which is a little frustrating.) If not, you’ve got a short 2-3 hour game ahead of you.

So if you like robots and AIs, and if you’re interested in the way they experience emotions (and the morality of allowing robots to feel), definitely check this one out.

It's a free game so I can't complain much. I liked the feel of it, and being able to choose your icon and text color and the like were nice little features. Reminded me of using AIM back in the day.

Though I kinda wish I'd realized this was a romance game going in. My fault for not checking the tags, I guess, but I felt blindsided by the whole (spoilers?) "why didn't you kiss me" thing. I'm aromantic and a tad oblivious to this sort of thing, so if the Emily character was showing any interest in me before, I never noticed. It was even more bizarre when I was presented with choices that basically forced my character to be romantically interested in her. W-w-was I supposed to be...????

Overall the story felt like nothing special--it seemed like a typical highschool romance thing, and felt more foreign and unrelatable than anything else. But, again, my fault for not checking the tags first. I suppose folks who have actually had experience with romance of any sort might be more interested.

I'm saying "yes" to the recommendations, because, while the game didn't do anything for me, it's such a short experience and it doesn't cost anything, so there's not too much a reason to not try it.