Recent reviews by Playerjjjj

What a brilliant game. There's so much thematic depth to Signalis. Everything from the broadest strokes to the tiniest details feels deliberate. It's such a beautifully constructed tragedy -- a gut-wrenching meditation on how fears of loneliness and guilt go hand in hand. Aaaand it's all in the context of an excellent survival-horror game. My only complaint is that inventory management eventually stops feeling tense and becomes tedious, but that's a minor fly in the ointment.

Very much worth your time.

A fantastic expansion of the base game that delivers everything I hoped for and so much more. It's still a bit rough around the edges with typos and weird bugs, but they didn't mar the experience enough to stop me from thoroughly enjoying my time with the dlc. Given how much work the devs put into upgrading the base game, I have full confidence in their ability to repair these minor blemishes. If you like Suzerain, it's an easy recommendation.

10/10, would bankrupt the nation to renovate my royal yacht again.

An excellent homage to King's Field. Just a fun, solid game all around. Highly recommended.

Northern Journey really is something special. It's one of the most atmospheric depictions of wilderness I've ever seen in *any* medium, let alone other games. Don't let the low polygon count and blurry textures fool you -- this is one of the best-looking games I've played in years, and it has everything to do with how finely crafted its aesthetic is. There's a dizzying level of variety on display as well. There are vanishingly few enemies which appear in multiple locations, with most areas having their own roster of totally unique opponents. Combat is relatively simple, but it has just enough twists and turns to never get stale. The environments are just as varied, ranging from lush northern European forests to foreboding bogs to... more foreboding bogs. But don't let that put you off. These are the best and most distinct bogs in gaming! Some of the later locales are completely unexpected -- but I won't spoil those here.

Storywise, Northern Journey doesn't have a ton going on, but it's a fine framework to hang the rest of the game on. It's a walking tour of all the cool level ideas the developer had with a small cast of quirky characters and the occasional twist. I especially liked the game's habit of giving you unexpected boss fights in areas that look nothing like typical combat arenas -- it's surprising and forces you to think on your feet.

It's astounding to learn that this game is entirely the work of a solo developer. It's a handcrafted experience, and that shows throughout the experience, from every swaying, misty forest to every entry in the ost (the music, as an aside, is superb. It's absolutely not what you would expect for this kind of setting, but it fits perfectly).

I'm so happy to have played Northern Journey. It was an absolute joy from start to finish. 10/10. I've never been happier to not have arachnophobia.

10/10, would send my nation into an irrecoverable tailspin again.

A simple, stripped-down shooter permeated by an excellent atmosphere. INDUSTRIA is a beautiful game from start to finish. The gunplay is quite easy, but enemies deal enough damage and ammo is scarce enough that gameplay becomes an exercise in patience and restraint which I found quite gratifying. I imagine that these strengths are even more apparent on the harder difficulty setting. There aren't many weapons, nor enemy types, but given how short INDUSTRIA is, it really isn't a problem.

INDUSTRIA's story is... okay. It coasts on mood more than plot, and it succeeds for most of the game. Nothing extraordinary, nothing terrible. The ending is a bit of a mess. It's probably not a good idea to have your protagonist shout about how she doesn't understand large parts of the narrative if you're going to leave those threads mysterious -- it just feels like lampshading for something which would have worked perfectly well without being acknowledged. But, when it's all said and done, I didn't hate the story

INDUSTRIA is a gem of a game, and while it isn't perfectly polished, it's well worth your time if you like fps games, melancholy, late-Soviet architecture, or all of the above.

An extremely good boss rush game. Gorgeous presentation and an absolute killer of a soundtrack. Very challenging but also very fair. My only complaint about Furi is that it leaves me too hopped up on adrenaline to sleep after I play it.

It's MY dystopian micronation and *I* get to make the rules!!!!

Seriously though, this is a fantastic game. A bit light for a city builder, perhaps, but it makes up for it with solid survival mechanics and unsurpassed presentation. The world is rich and fascinating, bolstered by fantastic artwork, and serves the story well. There are some *tough* moral choices for a game that's mostly about staring at a smoky snow pit for hours on end! Frostpunk is very much worth your time.

A highly realistic game about how difficult it is to find playtesters for your new card game, and the lengths one man will go to in pursuit of that goal.

A solid immersive sim and rpg from the early 2000s. Excellent art direction, surprisingly intuitive gameplay, a decent story, and a well-realized world. It begins to suffer from the obtuseness common to rpgs of its era in its second half, but the world isn't large enough for it to be too much of a problem. Still, it could have used a few more lines here and there like, "You need X to proceed! We've heard rumors that it might be somewhere near Y!" Far from a dealbreaker, thankfully, and it's nothing an occasional trip to the forums can't fix.

No one does it like Arkane. Arx Fatalis remains a worthy ancestor to the studio's more recent output. Highly worth checking out if you're at all curious.