Recent reviews by 7heo

Clever and depressing (cancer themed) little puzzle game, but the level designer(s) clearly missed the mark on making the game fun...

Great game. Very fun, well done, would buy again.

Simply the best narrative game
I have played in a while...

it says steam deck "verified", but it is extremely tedious to play: the game is time sensitive, and the interface is horrible to use in a rush. Maybe a good game, but certainly not with the steam deck...

Ok so, I wanna support the devs, so I'll leave a positive review, but this game has issues. Like, a bunch of them. I'm pretty sure there is no QA/QC done in the development process, let alone an organized team doing that (note: I realized they even let some typos pass in the parts names, so that if you, for example, search for a "sprocket cover" for the "Naky" bike you will not find it, as it is called a "spocket cover"...).

On the top of that, the game has mandatory motion blur. Can't deactivate it. The game also has a bunch of bugs, which aren't necessarily game breaking, but definitely the annoying kind. From items suddenly disappearing from your inventory, to all the parts magically appearing after you select one part (from the couple you can see) to repair; there are also bugs in the gameplay code, that can make parts go into the wrong subsection (brakes, suspensions, engine, etc) and be locked there (thereby also locking any interaction they would be part of). If you open menus during tasks (to multitask), it can sometimes lock the task into "finished, must pick item up" mode, even after you remove the item, forcing you to save, return to menu, and get back to the game...

So, do I recommend this game? Not really. Is it fun? Yeah, can be, it's relaxing too, but it's definitely NOT worth the asking price.

Also, don't imagine that it's technically accurate in any way: to improve braking, you can repair the engine. To improve acceleration, you can change the brakes, or even replace the various cases (thus adding weight back to the motorcycle). It is definitely simple, but does not really make any sense.
The way it works is basically: the quality of components determines the baseline of the percentage of any of the four global characteristics for a given motorcycle (acceleration, handling, breaking, max speed), and then the general "health level" percentage is then applied (by multiplication) to that baseline. That's why you can improve ANY part of a motorcycle to raise any of their characteristics. Not ideal. And then when your motorcycle is at 100% "health level", you have to improve the quality of the parts to raise the characteristics (not sure if they raise by an amount related to the type of part, or if it is totally arbitrary, but this behavior is at least more logical).

Lastly, the interface is generally bogus too, with elements moving instantly every time it refreshes, making you click on stuff you didn't want to (cancel quest, for example).

The FPS counter says 50-60 FPS, but my eyes say 5-10. I know I'm tired, but it's not just that. This 2016 game struggles on High-end 2016 hardware. Nope. Just nope. Got it on sale, still consider it money poorly spent.

And then there are the DLCs. Those bikes really should be included in the main game. Developers like this should be ashamed. Not only you need to unlock the bikes ingame, but also with hard-earned currency? Hell no.

Great little free game. Quite fun, even if quirky. Even better with the right background music.

I am not a seasoned driver, but I do own a motorcycle (Honda CBR - and I have driven other bikes, Suzuki, Kawasaki, etc) and the way the machines behave in the game isn't at all what I experienced in the physical realm... Also the motorcycle customization is both annoyingly repetitive and drastically limited, it feels extremely scripted, and very arbitrary. Similarly, I did not care for the pit stop game mechanic.

In addition, some achievements are bugged (the behavior described on the link happened to me too, except it never got resolved for me - somehow I got it eventually after posting this review, but still); and the start button entirely bugged out for me in the last hours I played the game, so that I had to use the escape key on the keyboard. I also experienced swapped controls occasionally (upon controller disconnect/reconnect). Needless to say, the game severely lacks (QA) polish. The game even crashed during a loading screen; merely because I alt-tabbed from it. And after I closed it with Alt-F4, the music was still running in the background, and steam still saw it as "running"...

This game runs well technically and is really beautiful, but that's pretty much all about it.

My recommendation: Buy this game.

Regardless of if you think you'll like it or not, regardless of if it is on sale or not. If you have the money, and because you are already considering getting it (since you are reading this review), buy this game.

Here are the reasons:

1. The developer is just amazing. They care about their product, they react to the community feedback, they are even checking the reviews to proactively scout bug reports (see their response to my original review (left at the bottom of this one for transparency) as to how I know).
   
2. The game runs well, is overall extremely fun, well balanced, highly re-playable, and still challenging even after dozen of playtime hours.
   
3. Fun co-op local games that aren't "4 player sofa-evening" games aren't all that common anymore. This one reminds me much more of my childhood evenings spent at my friend's place eating junk in pajamas until their mom would come and "coerce" us to go to bed...
   
4. The art is great. There is a bit of story too, not too much, but enough if you want one. The general atmosphere is rather cool too.

All in all, if I had to buy it again, I'd definitely buy it again. This game's great. Developer's awesome. I can't wait to try it on the Steam Deck, I think it will be very nice to play it on it.

And for the record, the problem that made me post my original review has been entirely fixed after an email exchange with the developer in less than a week from the original review submission. 👍

Update: I have since tried it on a steam deck for a couple minutes, and it runs great and looks amazing. If you are searching for a great game for the deck, you can go ahead and get it!

Original review for transparency:

This game has a MAJOR problem with the gamepad controls and the mouse: as soon as you move the mouse (even the smallest amount), or touch the keyboard (alt-tab, press a key by mistake, etc), the keyboard/mouse controls are "activated", and won't get disabled.

As a consequence, the character will then aim by default wherever the mouse is, therefore making it borderline impossible to play with anything but the keyboard and mouse, which really sucks. The fix for this is trivial: disable the keyboard/mouse whenever the input for all players on screen are assigned to a controller. But it's not implemented.

Too bad, the game is otherwise really nice.

I wanted this game because it looked really fun, and is rated "Overwhelmingly positive" (95% recent, 96% all time). Since it was 60% off during the Winter sales, I finally got it.

I played a few dozen minutes, went to the second level, got bored, stopped trying, died. This game isn't fun as it is said, and in my opinion it is overhyped.

There are in my view better games out there at a similar price point (even on sale).

My real reason for giving it a bad review is the impossibility to re-map keyboard/mouse controls. I know this is a controller-oriented game, but still... That is a basic option and should be a given.

Given my current finances, 6 bucks for such game is too much. Maybe another time.