Recent reviews by Grahamster

Probably as close to an 11/10 as any game could ever be

Such a perfect, odd, artistic vision for a game. What would be a run-of-the-mill tower defense game is quickly uplifted by every decision made which doesn't conform to the genre. When people think of games made with a specific vision in mind this should honest to God be the top contender.

Every decision from the art style to the mini games has been considered and ultimately returned with the simple answer of "It's what I wanted in the game". I don't care how many people actually worked on this game, it feels like it was one vision shared by all and achieved to great success. When I think of game design, this is the first game I ever think of. So perfect, so odd, so lovely.

Also, the music is banging.

10/10.

Each wonderful, fun, well-integrated mechanic makes the mistakes stick out that much more. The engine is so much cleaner and better than Spelunky 1, both visually, and control-wise. Much of the game feels very well-thought out, but again, makes the stupidity more glaring, so much so that even after the many patches within the first few years of launch, a few key things went unchanged and remain confounding.

Things like the half-baked "Second Layer" mechanic, which is maybe used in an engaging way three times (twice to just avoid a level transition the first had, to the exact same areas, and the third to actually be mildly interesting by introducing a huge castle behind the initial level), prove that there are some new ideas the developers had to play with, but many of the new mechanics just feel unengaging.

A fair amount of time seems to have been put into quest mechanics, liquid mechanics, new backpack mechanics, and mounts.

The majority of quests provide underwhelming rewards -

More turkey spawns/Yang - Sacrifice of not getting 3 health points earlier in the run with the murder of Yang and his precious turkeys, and having to buy the three turkeys

Access to Mme Tusk's idol & Vault/Sparrow - Again, the murder of Sparrow (who needs to be spawned by stealing from the first shop) provides these same things as well as the means quite easily (via a skeleton key from her corpse). Not to mention if you're going for a score run, you need to kill Sparrow anyway as she will aggro if you take more than half the chests in Tusk's Vault

A Bomb Box/Three Sisters - The tedium of searching for the three sisters if they don't spawn conveniently arguably outweighs this reward, especially since you'll be visiting the Black Market and getting some odd 40 bombs there anyway
Alien Compass - Not only do you have to find the key and potentially backtrack in the first level of Volcana, you then have to visit the Temple which it's not possible to get the Tablet from without losing the Ankh in the process, and if you do choose to play in-sequence and sacrifice yourself, you lose Vlad's Cape which is a contender for the best backpack item.

The True Crown/Beg - Maybe the only quest which is worthwhile for score runs. Superior to Plasma Cannon because you can carry other items and throw bombs vertically.

I do not understand the benefit of adding this entire mechanic and then only adding two NPCs who actually make it feel fleshed out. If there were more Van Horsings and Begs and fewer Yangs, it would feel more worthwhile to actually engage with the Quest mechanic. As it is implemented (and will remain implemented), it's just kind of baffling.

The lack of level feels and optional levels (Worm, Mothership, Castle) from the original, in conjunction with these scripted quests, make the runs feel less random and more predictable, which is not desirable for a rogue-like.

The Liquid mechanics are also extremely frustratingly implemented. Funnily enough, the liquids do not feel fluid enough. Lava and water slowly slough like jelly - But one measly drop, which seemingly stops dripping at random, is enough to instantly kill any Spelunker. This wouldn't be so bad if it was avoidable, but Volcana is fittingly filled with it, and even if you avoid it there, it remains present in Neo-Babylon, which is a strange hodge-podge of some of the games most frustrating instant deaths, and could probably only be made worse with the presence of croc-men. These liquid mechanics also make not sequence breaking even more frustrating, as sacrificing the Udjat Eye to use the Drill in Volcana has a high chance of breaking into one or two or four pools of lava, not to mention the chance of angering shopkeepers or Kali with it's use. Why these things can spawn below the drill is beyond me.

This may have been a loose list of complaints more than a review, but this game does have a lot of merits, which just make it's poor design decisions even more confusing. Graphically and control-wise it feels so refined compared to Spelunky HD, but every design decision in that game felt well thought-out and fair. The design of Spelunky 2 feels like it was made without taking into consideration how it would affect the larger game.

One of the best games eva made baby

one of the cooler games I've played as of late and I didn't even 100% it which I usually do because I felt very satisfied with my experience. considering I just picked it up because "haha mario 64 stretching what a silly mechanic!" and stayed for the actual narrative that's a pretty big plus. I enjoyed learning about the characters and seeing how I could engage in different ways with the story and enjoyed the endings and information I learned and the twists and turns were cool. The art style and decision to use AI generated pictures was nice and playing with the jerma holland portrait was fun. I liked the messages about identity and it did make me think a bit. cool game worth picking up.

gotta write a review for the steam awards badge but this game "rocks" if you know what I mean

TL;DR It is less than the sum of it's parts, and is definitely NOT worth $25.

The game half-asses it's Rogue-Lite and Resource Management/Stardew Valley-esque gameplay and both end up feeling not very fleshed out. The better of the two should definitely be the Combat, but it's laughably easy and I found myself not dying until the 2nd boss while playing the hardest difficulty.

The Fishing minigame is ripped straight from Stardew Valley but is also less challenging. I was able to catch every variety of Fish after visiting the one Fishing spot the game offers three times.

The art style and music is very charming and effective but it does not justify the lack of depth this game has. Sadly, it will still sell well because it is a quirky game with a high-level of polish (at least in the art department) which is being published by Devolver Digital. They are also marketing it very heavily, which did succeed in getting me to buy the game.

There were also several glitches I experienced while playing and several things which should not have passed game testing. The Shrine despawned from my game and I had to restart my game. Thankfully, I was able to use the same save, but it did take me out of the experience when all of my Cultists were sitting on the same tile where the Shrine should be while kneeling. The game seems to be hard-wired to inform the player of every time a Cultist eats a Grassy Gruel even when they have the "Grass Eater" trait. This led to me receiving a prompt 15 or so times telling me a Cultist ate a Grassy Gruel, but it was fine because they had the Grass Eater trait. I know that they have this trait and there is no need for the game to tell me every time a meal is eaten that has it.

Some of the elements, like Sacrificing Cultists, also seem to have little purpose or be superseded by other gameplay elements. I was able to max my Devotion (or whatever word they have for levelling up weapons and Curses) nearly every time I checked my Temple, mitigating the use of Sacrifice. It also incentivizes sacrificing high-ranking Cultists in the tutorial, but these Cultists would be better suited for joining you on your missions or going on missions.

I wanted to love this game, having highly enjoyed Hades, The Binding of Isaac, and Stardew Valley, but it feels like it tries to do too many things and few-to-none of them are done successfully.

Knucklebones I did really enjoy. It reminded me of Caravan from Fallout: New Vegas but you didn't need to read an instruction manual to play it. Even in Knucklebones, which was my favorite part of the game, there was a pretty severe oversight in the "How to Play" section. It read "Match Dice - When dice of the same number are placed in the same column, multiply their value." Logically, this would mean placing two 1 dice in the same column would have a value of 1, and two 6 dice in the same column would have a value of 36, because 1 times 1 is 1 and 6 times 6 is 36. However, this is not what happens, and instead adding additional dice of the same value multiplies the value the dice would have by 2 for the first additional die and 3 for the second. This means that two 1 dice equate to 4 in the score, and three 1 dice equate to 9. This was just a really dumb, not game-breaking oversight, but there should be no incorrect information or confusion in a "How to Play" section that has about 4 sentences in it.

Overall, there is not enough depth to justify the $25 price tag, and while the game has a great sense of style, the gameplay is too shallow to keep player interest. It is also lacking that extra level of polish I would expect from a game that is being marketed so heavily.