Recent reviews by Soranos

This is truly atrocious, there are dozens of fire emblem rom hacks better than this.
There is so much wrong with this game I don't even feel it's worth the effort to touch on all the parts I had problems with in just the opening couple of chapters, the controls, balance, map design, audio design, all of it sucked.

Why is a 'perfect run' categorized by NOT killing the kid diddlers?

A rock solid survival horror, a good step up from the developer's previous entry, I had a good time going through this, with a few hang ups.

I liked the combat, it had satisfying feedback when hitting and killing enemies, it rewarded ammo conservation by being patient and using the right weapon for the right job, the upgrades you collected throughout the game were quite nice as well, making it easier and easier to fight large hordes of enemies, although the SMG felt a bit lack luster, rarely being more useful/efficent than the shotgun or pistol.
The bosses were pretty alright, the final boss I found a bit hard to read and avoid his attacks, but I had banked enough healing items to where I wasn't punished for taking a few hits.

I was a fan of the visual design, the environments were appealing and I didn't have any clarity issues when it came to fighting enemies, as they were placed in a way where you would always see them coming and visual indications for their weaknesses were clear.

While most puzzles were nice, with clear answers in the environment or a note on a counter top, there were some which just didn't make much sense.
In the third area, the mansion, you're supposed to turn off a light in the bathrooms which reveals the code '1981' on the wall, but that doesn't open the door, 1991 does, I learned this from a guide because I was lost on how I was supposed to figure it out without guessing a number of similar possible answers, I don't recall any clue that which indicated that the bathroom code would be wrong.

The second weird puzzle I remember is after doubling back from the underground area, you pick up a square gold plate which you are supposed to immediately return to the previous room and cut it into the shape of a triangle, while simple when you understand what you need, it should be asked, why did I need to do that step at all?
That's the only time you use that specific machine to cut something into a triangle shape, I was more confused because the station you use to cut the gold into a triangle looked just like the station you use to turn 'Spores' into elemental grenades, so I dismissed it's importance because I didn't assume it was an important object.

While those specific instances were annoying, they are mostly minor issues, and while I am glad there is more content to play through in this game than the first, it does suffer more from backtracking because of the increased map size, while its not uncommon in survival horrors I did end up spending a notable amount of my play time running between back and forth across the map, some of which were specifically spurred by instances where I was at a loss, like my Gold Triangle problem.

Despite the complaints I have, I still enjoyed it enough to let it monopolize my time for the past two days and would recommend it for people seeking more survival horror games after they've played the best the genre has to offer.

Not a bad game overall, but it felt rather archaic, it's an homage to classic Resident Evil, but I think many other games do it better including it's sequel.

I think the biggest plus it had was it's short play time, it achieves the classic survival horror experience of light puzzle solving and resource management in around 3 hours, and by the end it managed to avoid annoying the player with excessive backtracking.

My primary issue with the game was it's controls, raising and lowering your gun felt clunky, especially because you can't move when aiming, if an enemy attacked you, you had to make a bit of distance between your enemy before you could respond, creating a number of places with awkward angles to try and fight in.
In addition to that, the camera was pretty annoying in places, there were 3 or 4 places where I ran into a zombie that I couldn't see, and as I was using a mouse, aiming at these zombies would also be rather awkward.

Definitely on the fence of recommending it, if it's cheap to you, probably worth picking up, but it's sequel Heaven Dust 2, is a bigger and largely much more refined experience, which I would confidently recommend.

The detailed gore of anime girl cult members was too much of a turn off for me to give it more of a shot.
My main positive was the weapons, bullet drop was an interesting feature, alt fires were cool, but with that I didn't like the iron sights, looked poor and was quite hard to actually aim with.
Outside of the guro fetish, I thought the UI looked atrocious, it did function so it wasn't a total failure, but it seemed like it wasn't improved since it reached that point, beyond that I was not at all a fan of the level art, far too repetitive, that probably would've killed it for me on its own before I hit the two hour mark.

I felt very whelmed playing Going Under.

Art and humor didn't move the needle for me and it's gameplay was too simple to hold my attention.
You can roll, you can attack, and you can throw whatever you're holding, while some weapons were faster and others slower, there was little difference to how you needed to play while using them.

I wouldn't call the roguelike passives bad, but in my couple of runs I didn't get to a point where I thought "Oh thats a cool combo" or managed to build any synergy that felt really good to play with, it was a lot of, now big weapon, it do more damage, now you might heal after kill, and such, I'm not sure if its just the passives, or if it's more of an issue with how short the runs are, only being 3 floors plus a boss, and the upgrades are pretty sparse even considering a run time of half an hour ish.

I never felt challenged while playing, I completed the first dungeon in one attempt and the second in two, and at the end of it I was just bored, it never felt like the game clicked together and hit any kind of flow.

Really great co-op extraction game, with or without friends.

Everything in this game works well, I especially love the monster design, they all have their own quirks to dealing with them, making it very engaging playing around them, though shovels and maybe a stun grenade can take care of most of them.

It has a strong skeleton, the main thing I want to see as the game continues development is just more content.
More rooms, make the moons more unique, new strange enemies, the ability to grab and sell enemy corpses, more weird gadgets, purchasable clown horn.
And a way to actually win a run, although I believe the developer already has a plan for that.

After about 30 hours I think I've got my fill of it for now, I would recommend it at $10 and I'll definitely come back to it as it gets updates.

Cute lil game.

The visuals charmed me from the start, but the movement in running around the island became the most enjoyable part of the game for me.
The dialogue was quite good, talking to the other animals felt quite natural and fun and the main conflict between him and his sister was wrapped up nicely.

There is no game quite like Against the Storm, the design concept is brilliant and the game is already exceptional, I can't wait to see how they build on this in the future.

If you don't rock and stone, you ain't coming home.