Recenzii recente de Michael

This game was reviewed using Versions 1.00 to 1.10. Your experience on other versions may vary.

It's a fun JRPG, but to me it narrowly missed the mark as an Atelier game. The story, characters, and worldbuilding were great, albeit a slow burner at times; but combat is way too easy and the iconic crafting system I got into Atelier to experience has been too oversimplified here. While I can't deny that I still had fun with it, a part of me can't help but think that it could have done some very important things better.

Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is the latest game in the Atelier series, a loosely-connected series of JRPGs with an emphasis on deep, alchemy-themed crafting systems. The story follows a girl named Yumia Liessfeldt, who lives in an era where alchemy has long become a forbidden practice; but after the mysterious death of her mother leads her to discover that she descends from a long line of alchemists, she joins a research team on an expedition to a faraway continent in the hopes of uncovering the history of her family, the empire that once ruled over the continent, and maybe even alchemy itself.

I want to preface by saying that my recommendation comes with a bit of a disclaimer: I think this is a good JRPG, but it feels lacking specifically as an Atelier game. Perhaps you should take that statement with a grain of salt since my only other Atelier experience so far is Ryza 1, but it doesn't change the fact that I was underwhelmed by certain key parts of the game. I'll start with the good and work my way down to the bad, because I still think there's a lot to enjoy here despite its missteps.

First, the open world map, something relatively new to the Atelier series. I see a lot of studios make the jump to open worlds for seemingly no other reason than "we think bigger = better", often to questionable success; but I think Yumia does a good job of justifying its open world both mechanically and narratively. The "research team exploring an abandoned civilization" story gives you a good excuse to deviate from the main story path to explore—something I'm sure everyone that's played an open-world game can relate to—because that exploration is part of the story. It also pairs very well with Atelier's existing gameplay loop of gathering materials from the environment to use in alchemy, and to that end, they made sure to fill each region of the map with its own unique variety of flora, gemstones, and more for you to collect. Combined with all manner of treasures and secrets to find, as well as unlockable ways to make travel a smoother experience, exploration as a whole ends up being both very fun and very rewarding.

Compared to the largely slice-of-life tone I got from Ryza and how often I'm told that Atelier is all about "cute girls doing cute things", I was surprised to see that Yumia's story took things in a much more serious direction. That said, it's a story that kept me engaged up to the very end, and there are still plenty of lighthearted moments throughout to counterbalance that seriousness without undermining it. Admittedly, the main cast didn't grab my attention at first besides liking their designs, but they all really grew on me over time since each one got their own individual character arcs throughout the story. Although some felt more fleshed out than others, I still found myself way more attached to all of them than I expected, and it even managed to turn my most disliked member of the party into one of my favorites by the end of it.

Combat is the other thing that's deviated heavily from the rest of the series, shifting away from the turn-based battles of Atelier's past and into full-fledged real-time action. You sort of dance around the enemy as you fight, guarding or parrying their standard attacks and avoiding their damage cones when they launch AoE attacks. It's frantic, it's flashy, and it's fun at first; but it also starts to feel pretty mindless after a while. The main issue is that the difficulty scaling is all out of whack, and most of the game is spent fighting enemies that are too weak and give too much EXP. My party was up to level 50 before I left the first region, and they hit the max level of 100 around the 2/3 mark of the game. I even did something I never do and cranked up the difficulty to "Very Hard" around the 1/3 mark to try and tackle the issue, but I was still blitzing through every battle like it was nothing. This meant that many of the game's deeper combat mechanics and combat-related items went unused because I ripped through everything too fast to take advantage of them.

This didn't bother me as much as it probably should have because I didn't get into the Atelier series for its combat, but rather the promise of deep and engaging crafting mechanics—and this is sadly where my biggest hang-up with Atelier Yumia lies, because the crafting system here lacks that depth. It looks complex at first due to its unconventional interface, but other than letting you increase the number of materials you can add to a craft, the mechanics don't evolve much from what you're presented with at the start of the game. Moreover, many aspects of the system are terribly unbalanced, making it way too easy to make late-game-quality crafts in just a few hours, often using just the materials you can pick up off the ground. The few mechanics that do exist to let dedicated players try to "crack" the system and optimize their gear (e.g. trait crystals, reforging) feel pointless because, like I said, combat suffers from poor difficulty scaling and everything can be wiped out with ease so long as you're putting more than the bare minimum effort into what you craft. I don't think it's an outright bad system, but it's far too shallow from what I'd expect out of a series whose primary draw is supposed to be the depth of that very system.

Even though I walked away from Atelier Yumia with mixed feelings in certain areas, I can't deny that I still had fun with it overall, enough so that I ended up dumping 90 hours into it and getting 100% achievement completion in the process. Like I said, there's a fun JRPG here to be sure; but as an Atelier game specifically, I must admit that it left something to be desired. If Yumia gets a sequel—and I'm pretty confident it will since it's now the fastest-selling game in the series' history—I hope they give us more to chew on in regards to alchemy, because I do think there's a solid foundation here even if it's in desperate need of some fine-tuning. Until then, I'll likely be turning to older Atelier games to take care of the itch for deep crafting mechanics that Yumia couldn't quite scratch.

A pretty solid hidden object game with 38 HO levels as well as 30 optional minigame levels, all of which were surprisingly fun. While the HO levels do struggle with clarity once in a while (e.g. using unfamiliar terms or confusing image hints), it was nowhere near bad enough to dissuade me from completing or recommending the game.

Hidden object games have always been a not-so-guilty pleasure of mine ever since my parents got me the I SPY: Treasure Hunt CD-ROM when I was a kid; so when a Steam key for a hidden object game I'd never heard of had been sent to me through the Curator Connect program that I honestly forgot existed, it didn't take much convincing for me to give it a shot. Big Adventure: Trip to Europe 9 - Collector's Edition—aside from being a real mouthful of a title—is one of the latest from AVI Games, a developer that, judging from some quick research online, exclusively deals in hidden object games. Most of their catalogue seems to be themed around travel, and it even includes little nuggets of information on the different landmarks/locales depicted in each level.

The base game contains a total of 30 hidden object levels, and returning to the main menu to visit the "Collectors Edition Content" tab provides an additional 8 in case you're itching for more when you're done. Most of these follow the standard formula of "here's a list of words, click the corresponding object in the level", but it shakes things up every few levels by adding a small twist to your hunt, like switching from words to zoomed-in textures from the object, or flipping the script to make you drag and drop objects from your list to "fix" things in the level (e.g. putting a wheel on a bike). Along with the mandatory list, you also have a couple optional goals to pursue: each level contains a raccoon and a stamp to find, and most levels will provide a bonus for finding certain objects using only their silhouettes. There was a surprising amount of variety considering I expected the entire game to just be the "word list" style of level design, and it definitely succeeded at keeping the gameplay from getting stale. If that's not enough, I also discovered that each time you load a level changes what you need to find, adding a fair bit of replayability that was unexpected but appreciated.

While I wouldn't exactly call it a hard HO game, it suffers from issues with clarity from time to time that resulted in a few small bumps in my playthrough, though the exact reason depends on the type of level. For example, the standard "word list" levels occasionally tripped me up because it either used terms I wasn't familiar with (e.g. calling one of those inflatable tube men an "airdancer") or used certain terms in confusing ways, like when the clue "pointer" was used in two different levels to describe two very different objects. Another example comes from those "drag and drop" levels, where it can sometimes be difficult to tell what you're actually holding, resulting in the kind of challenge that doesn't feel like it was intended. None of this was bad enough to put me off of playing, but I mention it because it's something I hope is improved in later titles.

While I'm on vaguely the subject of visuals, the thing that stood out the most when I first looked into the game was its visual style. At a glance, each level looks like it's been cobbled together using a variety of stock images with some occasional edits to include the more abstract hidden objects. The best example is that the family of four that act as the main characters were very clearly added by taking four people's heads and stitching them onto other people's bodies to put them in whatever outfits/poses each level calls for. This isn't a dig at AVI or the game—far from it, actually. It ended up giving the game an old-school low-budget feel like those old CD-ROM games I used to play, and I mean that in the best way. Plus, in a time where AI-generated art has run rampant in the games industry with little to no meaningful oversight, it was nice to see a game that—at least to my somewhat untrained eye—appears not to have taken that route and has instead stuck to the classic combo of stock images and Photoshop.

It would be nice to see an actual list of credits to confirm that, though, because the only entity listed is AVI Games itself for "design and development", no mention of where the art or sound came from. For example, Track 15 of the game's soundtrack (every track is numbered, not named) looks to be the instrumental version of "Out of the Cold" by Nashional, an artist with royalty-free music site Epidemic Sound; and the only way I could find this info was by scanning the song with Shazam. The industry is now sadly at a point where I'm inclined to ask questions about this sort of thing; and even though it looks like everything is above board, it'd be reassuring to see proper credit for the game's art/sound assets to be sure, even if their licensing terms don't explicitly require it. I'll accept that this is probably a silly thing to spend this much time ranting about, but it's a hill I'm willing to die on—okay, maybe not, but it's at least a hill I'm willing get a couple small bruises on.

Anyway, off my soapbox and back to the review. On top of all those hidden object levels, the base game also sprinkles in 14 unique minigames plus an additional 20 in that "CE Content" menu. Each one is entirely unique, and there's once again a shocking amount of variety on display here. This can be a bit of a double-edged sword because it means your mileage will vary on these more than anywhere else, and I'd be surprised if anyone finds themselves enjoying every single minigame equally (I was doing good until I got to the slide puzzle). Luckily, if you find yourself struggling with any of them or just think they're getting in the way of your HO game experience, you have the option to skip any minigame with no meaningful penalty, provided you're not desperately worried about earning achievements.

Speaking of which, a final note for the achievement hunters out there: there are ten achievements to get, but they're only visible in-game and don't have proper Steam achievements attached to them. Players already clearing every level plus their optional goals should earn all but one in the process, and the last just involves opening a separate menu and "buying" some knickknacks using points earned from clearing levels. Other than that, there's nothing you need to go too far out of your way for.

If you're aiming to complete everything, I'd say you're looking at around 3-5 hours of content, which is much higher than I expected going into it. It was a pleasant surprise overall, and if the hidden object genre is your jam, I'd say there's plenty here to justify the $8 price tag.

For more game reviews, check out my Curator page!

This game was reviewed using Version 1.0.4. Your experience on other versions may vary.

An excellent tribute to the point-and-click adventure games of the past that quickly cemented itself as one of my favorite games of 2024. The puzzles are a fun challenge, everything outside the gameplay is just phenomenal, and the worst I can say is that it sometimes gets caught in the trappings of old point-and-click design (e.g. confusing puzzle logic, unhelpful hints). Still, it's nowhere near bad enough to dissuade me from recommending it.

Loco Motive is a point-and-click puzzle game about a murder mystery where you are the prime suspect—all three of them, actually. The story takes place in the 1930s aboard the Reuss Express luxury steam train, where its wealthy owner Lady Unterwald was set to give an important speech in front of her family and close business associates. Lady Unterwald is assassinated before she can finish her speech, however, and you follow the events that happen next through the perspective of three of the train's passengers: Arthur, the late Unterwald's estate attorney; Herman, a writer of fictional detective novels that's in way over his head; and Diana, an undercover agent who's here to...well, that's classified. I can spare you the rant and just say that Loco Motive is not only a really good game, but easily one of my favorite games of 2024.

If you're a fan of old-school point-and-click games, then you know what to expect when it comes to gameplay. You wander around the map talking to everyone you see and shoving everything that isn't nailed down into your comically-oversized pockets, and then you try to solve puzzles that usually boil down to "use [this item you stole] on [that thing over there] in order to [do something wacky that progresses the plot]"—and trust me, I mean all of this in the most affectionate way. It's not always that straightforward, though: sometimes you have to combine items together, and some items are even red herrings that don't get used at all. If you get stuck, there's a built-in hint system available for most of the game that they cleverly incorporate into the narrative: a phone hotline where you contact famous detective Dirk Chiselton (yes, that's his real name) to help you work out any current puzzles. It's a lot of fun, but it doesn't always escape some of the common quirks of point-and-click puzzle design: you can often collect items long before you have a logical reason to do so (though the writing does lampshade this from time to time), some puzzles use bigger leaps in logic than you might be comfortable with, and it's possible to find yourself stuck on a puzzle where the hint only tells you the part you already solved. I never found it to devolve into "moon logic" territory or anything, and every solution did make sense in hindsight even if I struggled to figure it out without a little help.

That's really the only negative point I have towards the game, because everything else is just fantastic. The pixel art style is very reminiscent of the golden age of LucasArts and Sierra games, and the close-up artwork they throw in from time to time reminds me a lot of the old Humongous Entertainment games. I know these comparisons are done to death every time a new point-and-click game hits the market, but can you really blame me this time? If I hadn't seen the marketing before launch, you could've told me that this was a re-release from the DOS era and I might've believed you. The only things that would betray that identity at a glance are the wider color palate and a certain fluidity in the animation that make it feel a little more modern, yet not so different that it falls out of line with the old-school aesthetic.

Speaking of old-school aesthetic, almost all of the game's soundtrack consists of good ol' jazz noir tracks to fit the 1930s setting. The soundtrack was composed by Paul Zimmerman, who also did the music for Luna's Fishing Garden, Wildfrost, and a few others; and he knocked it out of the park with this one. I might be biased because I'm a sucker for jazz music in video games, but I think it manages to nail both the 1930s feel and the "hard-boiled detective noir" feel without being so hard-boiled that it stops fitting in with the otherwise lighthearted and silly nature of the game. If you get to the end of this review and decide you want to get the game, I'd definitely suggest getting the soundtrack DLC along with it.

Much of the fun from a point-and-click game tends to come from the writing, and that's especially the case here. Despite the morbid premise of "old lady assassination", it's a slapstick comedy at heart, and thankfully both the physical and verbal gags land more often than not. Sure, most of the jokes are really corny, but that's the type of humor that I like, and it got a lot of good laughs out of me during my playthrough. It doesn't rely much on the kind of referential humor that's bound to be outdated shortly after launch (e.g. internet memes), save for a couple "blink and you'll miss it" gags and an extended segment that plays on the modern-day use of machines and AI to analyze/grade creative works—one can only hope that last one will become a thing of the past, anyway. It doesn't try to do anything super emotional or complex in its narrative, but I don't really think it needs to—it's just supposed to be something that you can laugh at, and that's exactly what it is.

Suffice to say that the writing is entertaining on its own, but the voice acting is what pushes it over the top. I don't think there was a single performance here that I would describe as anything less than great, the only exceptions being the ones that somehow managed to be even better. My favorite had to be Sean Chiplock as Arthur Ackerman, who did such a good job pretending to be a man that loves bureaucratic paperwork more than life itself that I'm half-convinced he wasn't actually pretending. There were others that stood out to me, like Antonio Greco as Donny Donato, but I will stress again that every VA here delivered an excellent performance and added so, so much charm to the experience.

"Charming" really is the best word to describe it, because Loco Motive practically has charm coming out of its pores. It endeared itself to me almost immediately when I realized that every interaction point had its own flavor text instead of just "Examine X" or "Take Y", and it kept me constantly entertained like that for almost all of my 10-12 hour run—I left the game open in the background sometimes, so I don't know exactly how long it was. It doesn't matter, though, because it was well worth the purchase no matter how long it happened to take me.

This game was reviewed using Build 159. Your experience on other versions may vary.

An ambitious blend of Tetris-based combat in a JRPG-style environment that does great with the former but not as good with the latter. The gameplay is a lot of fun, and it offers multiple ways to build your character and even tweak the mechanics (i.e. real-time action vs turn-based) to suit your preferences. The writing, on the other hand, suffers from pacing issues that make much of the main story feel unsatisfying, though the side stories were much more engaging in comparison. Approach it as a twist on Tetris instead of a twist on a JRPG and I think you'll enjoy it more.

Flowstone Saga is another one of those games that you look at and go "Why have I never seen anyone try this combination before?"—in this case, a combination of legally-distinct Tetris gameplay with a JRPG-style story and world. The story follows a young woman named Mirai, who recently washed up on an island at the edge of the world with no memory of her past. After being taken in by the residents of the island's lone village, she accidentally stumbles on something called the Flowstone that gives her a whole smattering of special powers—repairing broken structures, building entirely new ones out of a few bare materials, attacking enemies, and basically whatever else the plot requires it to do.

When it comes to gameplay, I think it does an excellent job. Combat is handled via Tetris boards where you perform an attack on the enemy every time you clear a line—there's much more to it, but that's the gist. You can choose to play in one of two ways, which I'll call "Hold" and "Drop" mode. Drop mode is the standard way to play, where your pieces fall down the board at a set rate and the enemy attacks via a charge meter similar to the ATB system from Final Fantasy. Hold mode is a different story: pieces not only stop falling down the board, but it also replaces the enemy charge meter with a counter that ticks up every time you put down a piece, effectively turning it into a turn-based battle system. This is a really nice approach that makes the game more accessible to players that struggle with rapid movements (or just kinda stink at Tetris like me), and what's nice is that you can change this setting at any time.

Speaking of change, you're given a lot of freedom to change up your tactics while playing. I mean, sure, it's all still the same core gameplay; but you can unlock equipment that boosts your base stats, perks that provide passive bonuses, and even "Spirit Frogs" that alter both the size and available pieces on the board—all of which you can change at any time outside of battle. The right combinations can lead to some unexpected but fun strategies, like a build that prioritizes rapid single-line clears over larger multi-line combos, or riskier builds that encourage tall columns in exchange for massive power boosts. If you want a good, silly example that I ran into: I got so focused on clearing lines as fast as possible that I kept forgetting to use my magic spells to help me, and I eventually found multiple pieces of gear that gave me a boost to raw attack power whenever my mana bar was full, essentially rewarding me for my accidental self-imposed handicap.

There's a lot more I could talk about regarding combat if I had the space for it, but best thing I can say is this: do you ever get those moments in an RPG where you really don't want to get into another fight, but you still get sucked into one for some dumb reason and then battling ends up feeling like a chore? It took me until the last quarter of the game to experience that, and that was with me jumping into every single fight that came my way up until that point. I did eventually start getting sick of it, but I think having this happen that far into my run says more about my patience for Tetris than the quality of the game.

With all that said, the experience is brought down by the writing. The story itself is fine, as is the dialogue outside of a couple spelling/grammar mistakes, but the persistent issue here is the pacing. Most of the major story developments somehow manage to happen both too slowly and too quickly, giving you plot threads that are left unattended for hours at a time before rapidly resolving with little to no buildup in the span of a few minutes. I can't fully explain the extent of this problem without discussing these threads in more depth, so here's your warning:


The two most egregious examples of this issue are the origin of the Flowstone and Mirai's missing memories. Both of these mysteries are set up in the first few minutes of the game, but they're immediately thrown to the wayside to tell a story that doesn't really relate to either one until just before the climax. It's not even a bad story by any means, but I spent most of the game questioning how any of it was related to the initial premise that was presented to me. You're given tiny clues to these mysteries here and there, but most of what you learn is abruptly dumped on you in the last 2-3 hours—and even then, it still leaves out a lot of key details on both. I'm pretty confident that I was paying attention to the main story the whole way through, but I still only feel like I kind of understand the Flowstone and how Mirai is connected to it. If there's any side content that would have given me more insight into this, I managed to miss it somewhere along the way.

The way it handled Mirai's memories was the most frustrating to me: you're told basically nothing about her past for the first 3/4 of the story, then suddenly the game sits you down in a cutscene and goes "Oh, this is how you get your memories back, and we're going to do that right now". The lore explanation is pulled out of nowhere, the fact that it all happens in one cutscene is jarring, and it somehow still manages to drag things out for the player when Mirai immediately pulls the "I don't have time to explain" card before we can learn what she just remembered. What's worse is that all of this seemed to have zero effect on her—she basically goes "I remember everything now!" and moves on with no real change in demeanor or behavior, further adding to how abrupt the whole thing felt.

It's not all bad, though, far from it. Like I said, the story outline and the dialogue in general are fine, but where the writing stands out the most to me is in the little moments between all the main story action. A lot of characters are given more depth than I expected them to get, and there were times where I found myself more invested in their interpersonal relationships and mini story arcs than I did the overarching plot. At the risk of kicking the poor girl while she's down, though, I think Mirai is the one that got the least development of the main cast. I wouldn't call her one-note, but I never felt like she grew as a character the same way that many of her friends or even some of the antagonists did. From start to finish—even after regaining her memories—she was still the same hotheaded but goodhearted person trying to do right by her friends, so at least the note she stayed on was a likeable one.


By the time the credits rolled, I was a bit conflicted. The way it handled the story left something to be desired, but mulling it over had me skew more towards positive thanks to the strength of the gameplay. I'd recommend approaching it as a quirky Tetris-style game rather than a quirky JRPG because I think it handles the former better than the latter, if that makes any sense at all.

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A very short but very good 2D platformer developed as part of a university student project. The presentation is excellent and the gameplay mechanics are fun, but the highest compliment (and perhaps biggest complaint) I could think to give it is that I really wish I had more to sink my teeth into.

I'm finally at a point where Steam's Discovery Queue is giving me interesting, niche games on a semi-regular basis instead of flooding me with nothing but a mix of "games entirely misaligned with my interests" and "cash grab shovelware"; and that gradual improvement in the Queue is how I stumbled onto KnightLight a few weeks back. The screenshots and the store description made it sound like something that I could get into, so I just downloaded it without looking any further until I finally carved out some time to play it earlier today. In hindsight, I could've done this a lot earlier since the whole thing takes maybe 10-20 minutes to beat.

This is a student project game, meaning that it was developed and published as part of a group of university students' graduation requirements, in this case from the DigiPen Institute of Technology. I did some digging out of curiosity and found that they not only make their students' games available through their own website[games.digipen.edu], but started releasing them simultaneously on Steam a couple years ago[www.digipen.edu]. I've played a few Steam games over the years that turned out to be student projects from various universities, and it's always cool to see the creativity that comes from something whose only goal (besides earning college credits) is to bring a fun idea to life.

Anyway, back to the game. KnightLight is a 2D platformer where you are the only half-decent light source in an otherwise pitch-black world. You can only see a short distance around your glowing ethereal body at any given moment, but you can click your mouse to emit a flash that briefly increases your vision range and also powers lamps that open nearby doors. Eventually, you'll find an abandoned suit of armor that you can possess, which focuses your vision into a long-range cone that follows the position of your mouse. The armor also changes how you're able to move about the world, letting you cross over spikes at the cost of a reduced jump height, meaning you'll have to juggle between the two in order to reach the end.

If the runtime was any indication, it isn't exactly a hard game to figure out. Having such limited vision takes a moment to get used to, but avoid rushing into every room and you could pretty easily clear the game without a single death (and there's an achievement if you do). Visually, it looks very nice even with the inherent limitation of being mostly dark all the time; mechanically, everything feels good thanks to tight, responsive controls; and it's surprisingly well-polished for something that probably had to go from conception to release in a few weeks at most. The only two complaints I could make are the short runtime and the lack of controller support; but it's a free game that was made for a school assignment, so both are understandable given the context of its development.

If you're still itching for more once you're done, you could try and do some achievement hunting to squeeze a little more time out of it. You can earn most of them just by being diligent about exploring the map, but full completion will require multiple playthroughs because of a few mutually exclusive ones like "Die for the first time" and "Beat the game without dying". The real time sinks (relatively speaking, anyway) are in the speedrun achievements: one for clearing the game in under 15 minutes, which I somehow managed by accident; and one for clearing it in under 5 minutes, which requires a lot more map knowledge and practice if my one really bad attempt is anything to be believed. Still, unless you're struggling a lot with that last one, I can't imagine that earning all achievements should take more than an hour or two tops.

Overall, KnightLight was a pleasant surprise and a blast to play, short as that blast may have been. Hopefully there will come a day where some or all of this team can come together again to make a more fleshed-out version of the ideas presented here, because I could see it having a lot of potential. I'm glad the almighty Steam Recommendation Algorithm™ brought this one to my attention, and I hope the students that put it together passed the university course they made it for with flying colors.

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This game was reviewed using Version 1.03b. Your experience on other versions may vary.

A Touhou-themed 2D platformer with very heavy and obvious Mario inspiration, though it has its fair share of unique ideas as well. The main game's worlds offer a fun, casual-friendly experience; while the post-game worlds significantly ramp up the difficulty in a way that you may or may not enjoy depending on what it is you're looking for in a platformer.

SUPER ALICE DOLLS is a 2D platformer starring the popular Touhou character Alice Margatroid as she travels the land searching for her stolen dolls. Collecting these dolls gives Alice special powers that she can use to defend herself against threats like angry faeries, mischievous rabbit youkai, and these little hairballs that I'm told are called kedama.

Okay, let's not beat around the bush: this is effectively a Super Mario Bros. fan game with custom Touhou sprites. It makes no attempt to hide its influence, but it does bring some of its own gameplay ideas to the table.

The game starts out simple with some very easy platforming and most things you encounter being reskins of Mario staples—goombas are white kedama and koopas are black kedama, your first doll power is a fire flower and the next is a hammer suit and the one after that is a propeller hat, so on and so forth. Over time, though, it starts presenting you with more unique elements like new powerups (e.g. laser, guard), bullet hell-style enemies to better fit the Touhou theme, and more experimental level design like semi-open exploration maps. The average difficulty still stays very low for the most part (for now), the exception typically being when you're trying to collect the magic book that's hidden in every level. These are earned either through more challenging platforming segments and/or solving some kind of puzzle, and these can really test your understanding of the game's mechanics at times. Still, even these aren't too bad aside from one that had me consulting the discussion forums for a solution because it relied on a very specific enemy interaction that I didn't know about.

The main game consists of 8 worlds, each with 4 normal stages and 1 bonus stage for a total of 40 stages to play. Normal stages are unlocked simply by beating the one before it, while the bonus stages are unlocked by spending this game's equivalent to coins, which I'm just going to call "points" because I don't know what the Japanese symbol on them actually says. Speaking of which, I should note that this is a Japanese game, but it's been translated into English everywhere that it matters. The translation is a little stiff at times, and the achievements list is still untranslated, but the game is fully playable even if you're a monolingual gaijin like me.

Collecting at least 32 magic books and reaching the end credits by beating Stage 8-4 unlocks a new set of challenge worlds to play. These are much, much harder in comparison to the main worlds, like jumping out of Super Mario Bros. and straight into the trenches of Super Mario Maker community stages—no, seriously, it even starts with an auto level before getting into the hard stuff. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but it was a bit of whiplash after playing through what was otherwise a very casual-friendly game that even advertises "gentle" gameplay systems on its store page. I suddenly found myself playing through stages that often require long precision platforming segments with little to no room for error, something that can be hard to achieve when the game itself is prone to things like buggy hitboxes when pushed to its limits like this.

I only got through a handful of these post-game stages before I decided to stop, because I wasn't really in the mood for this big of a shift in difficulty. It may sound weird to still recommend a game when I'm leaving a good chunk of it unplayed, but I view these the same way that I view something like the special worlds in Mario 3D World: they're there to provide a challenge for more experienced players looking for one, but there's still enough of a game here to be enjoyed even if you don't want to play these harder stages. The downside is that players that do want this kind of challenge are going to have to work through 2-3 hours of really easy gameplay to get to it, and I wouldn't blame anyone that didn't have the patience to play for that long just to get to the part they actually want to experience.

Overall, though, SUPER ALICE DOLLS was a lot more fun than I expected, and I'd still recommend it to someone interested in its more casual side. Honestly, something about its overall design gave off the vibe of an old Flash game, which might sound like an insult unless you're also part of the generation that grew up with them like I did. There was a certain nostalgic charm to it all, and I bet this would've popped off in the heyday of sites like Newgrounds and Konrgegate if it actually was a Flash game.

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This game was reviewed using Version 1.3.5. Your experience on other versions may vary.

A retro platformer that's smaller in scope compared to its predecessor, but also a much more polished experience overall. It plays a lot like Kirby's Adventure with a little froggy twist, managing to pack a surprising amount of fun ideas into just 7 short stages. Short, simple, fun, and well worth its low price tag.

Froggo's Adventure: Verdant Venture is a side-scrolling 2D platformer that acts as a sequel of sorts to the developer's previous game Froggo Swing 'n Grapple. A witch named Lily (a boss from FSnG) falls down the well that Froggo calls home, and, suspecting that the witch has stolen something from him, he sets off to confront her. That's all the story you get, and it's all the story you really need. As a quick disclaimer, I just got done playing Froggo Swing 'n Grapple last week, so a lot of this is going to be me directly comparing the two; but I promise that this game can still stand on its own two feet—in fact, I'd say that it's the better of the two.

Playing this almost felt like playing some long-lost Game Boy Color game that's being upscaled through an emulator. It's got a similar style, sound font, and color palette as your typical GBC fare; and the gameplay feels similar to that of Kirby's Adventure, a game it takes clear and heavy inspiration from. On a related note, Verdant Venture does away with the grapple mechanics from its predecessor in favor of this more traditional approach; though Froggo's long froggy tongue still has utility as a way to interact with objects or enemies from a distance, almost like if Yoshi was dropped into a Kirby game. Admittedly, losing the grapple mechanic means it also loses a big part of what made the first game stand out from other retro platformers; but I think Verdant Venture makes up for that by being a far more polished game overall.

There are 7 total levels to play, each one having a set of gems you can collect for an added challenge: 1-2 hidden somewhere in each stage, and an extra one for collecting every coin found in the stage. Collecting everything can be unexpectedly tricky at times, but I wouldn't exactly call it a hard game by any means. Compared to FSnG, the movement and physics feel a little better, the level design is a bit more tight, and it even manages to include a bunch of new enemies and stage mechanics despite being a smaller game. On the technical side of things, a big problem I had with FSnG was that it was considerably harder to play on controller since the movement mechanics were designed with mouse & keyboard in mind; but I think Verdant Venture has the opposite issue of feeling very nice on a controller but kinda stiff and clunky on M&K. There's not as wide of a gap between the two this time, though, so I don't think you're required to choose one or the other to get the full experience.

One final side note, achievement hunters will have a very easy time getting their blue ribbon for this one—for the most part. The one oddball is the achievement "Kick the Jaw", which requires you to use a maneuver that isn't properly explained in-game. I consulted a video from the only achievement guide on Steam and failed to replicate what was being done; but I eventually figured out what to do thanks to someone in the discussion forums named namigame: basically, you hold forward, use your tongue on the enemy, then keep holding forward as you press the tongue button again when closing in on the enemy to do a new little kick action that should defeat it. The only other advice I'd give is to try for "Lively Frog" on the second level; but other than that, the rest should be a cake walk.

It should only take an hour or so to complete, achievements included, but I promise that it's both an hour and a dollar well spent. You're not required to play Froggo Swing 'n Grapple to get into this one; and if anything, I would probably recommend Verdant Venture over it both for its higher quality and lower price tag. Sure, losing that grapple-based gameplay hook makes it a little less unique in a debateably oversaturated genre, but I still think the reduction in scope was a net positive since what we're left with feels better to play in just about every way. If nothing else, it's cool to see the improvement in skill of the (as far as I can tell) solo developer SmellyFrog over time; and seeing how both Froggo games have experimented with different gameplay mechanics has me excited to see what's in store in the upcoming Drifting Sky. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'm reviewing that one, too.

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This game was reviewed using Version 1.6.2. Your experience on other versions may vary.

A solid "Pokémon-like" that does a lot both aesthetically and mechanically to stand out among the rest. It takes full advantage of the shift to 2v2 battles with lots of little mechanical tweaks, and it's all bundled in a package with fantastic art and music; though the early game can be a bit tedious and the story left something to be desired. Overall, though, it's a good game that got me to dip my toes back into a genre that I normally don't enjoy much anymore, and that's got to mean something.

I'll admit, I was on the fence about playing Cassette Beasts when my friend gifted me a copy recently. It wasn't due to any fault of the game, it's just that I've found myself enjoying the Pokémon style of "creature collector + turn-based JRPG" gameplay less and less as time goes on. Then again, I felt the same way when I tried a similar game called Monster Sanctuary a few years ago, and I ended up dumping 40 hours into it because the changes it made to this long-established formula made things much more interesting to me. Even though I didn't find myself playing it for quite as long, I can say that Cassette Beasts got me to set aside my growing disinterest in the "Pokémon-like" genre thanks to everything it does to set itself apart.

1. The most obvious change is that gameplay is all about double battles, and the available move pool is built to accommodate a ton of potential strategies for 2v2 play. Most of the main story battles had NPCs using gimmicks that I didn't even know were possible, and the frustration of some particularly annoying ones was offset by the satisfaction of figuring out how to counter (or just flat-out negate) all their little tricks. I thought this would wear on my patience since I'm more accustomed to 1v1, but I only got more into it as I progressed.
   
   
2. Monster type advantage is about more than just weakness/resistance to certain elements, as now almost half of all type interactions can debuff or even buff the defender—air attacks lower the damage of fire types, water attacks heal plant types, fire attacks melt ice types to turn them into water types, and so on. The only downside of this is that it's a lot to keep track of, so you may find yourself pausing the game to consult the type chart in your inventory more often than you'd like (P.S. if you can't find this, open your Ranger Notebook and then it'll present itself).
   
   
3. Instead of capturing the monsters, you record their data onto cassette tapes that let you transform into the monster yourself. This means that buffs/debuffs will carry over when you switch tapes since they're being applied directly to you, and your level is now tied to your character rather than the individual tapes. Equipped tapes do still earn XP, but this gets converted into stars that unlock new moves and move slots until reaching five stars lets you evolve the monster on the tape (note that not all monsters can evolve).
   
   
4. Moves are represented as stickers that can be peeled off and reapplied to compatible tapes at any time outside of battle. Not only does this make adapting to upcoming threats much quicker and easier, but it makes monsters you don't plan on using regularly still have value by providing you with new stickers for your main team.
   
   
5. Battles can be made easier or harder via two difficulty sliders in the settings: AI Smartness, which determines how much your opponent plays strategically as opposed to picking its moves randomly; and Level Scaling, which determines if low-level enemies scale up and higher-level enemies scale down to better match your current level.

The early game was where I had the most trouble, partly because fast travel can take a couple hours to unlock, and partly because of how the in-game economy works. Buying any healing items and even resting outside of town requires materials found in chests or from winning battles, and these are scarce at first; so I spent an annoying amount of time backtracking into town to replenish until the game got more generous with materials. Once it did, though, things were smooth sailing—mostly. The game was a little buggy when I was out in the overworld, which usually presented itself in the player/object physics misbehaving (e.g. being unable to jump out of the water, barrels flying off-screen/into the ground, etc.). Nothing game-breaking, thankfully, but your mileage may vary.

Outside of the main story, you also have some side goals you can pursue: you can try to record all 128 monsters, hunt bootlegs (basically shiny monsters with a different elemental type), pursue partners' side stories to improve your relationships with them, tackle raid bosses that spawn randomly around the map, and solve all manner of environmental puzzles for extra materials/stickers—plus some other stuff you unlock later on that I won't spoil. Basically all of it comes back to battling in the end, though, so players looking to see everything on offer might find themselves doing a lot of grinding to get there. Luckily, playing through the main story doesn't actually require much dedicated grinding, if any, but that's assuming you're at least dabbling in this side content and not just doing the bare minimum when playing.

Quick side note: you may have seen that this game recently got a multiplayer update, but I wouldn't pick it up with the expectation that it's now a full-fledged co-op game. You can hang out with up to 8 players in the same map, team up in raids, and trade with/battle against one another; but you can't help each other with story quests or fight non-raid battles together, so you're mostly just hanging out in the same world doing your own thing. It can make some completionist goals like farming raid rewards or hunting bootlegs go much quicker, but it would've been nice to have the option to run through the story with the friend that got me my copy in the first place.

Finally, it would be a massive disservice if I didn't talk at least a little bit about the game's artistic elements. For one, the visuals are great all around: monster designs are interesting, characters are distinct, the whole map and everyone in it is just pleasant to look at, and the designs of the main antagonists (no spoilers, promise) were really, really cool. The music is, perhaps unsurprisingly given the cassette motifs, a big focus of the experience; and the best way to convey my thoughts on that is by saying that I was ready to buy the soundtrack DLC within my first hour of playtime (which I later did). The writing, on the other hand, is the weakest of the three—far from bad, but underwhelming in comparison. The main story didn't really hook me personally, the partner stories were nice (Kayleigh confirmed best girl, fight me) but didn't get fleshed out as much as I would have liked, and there isn't much going on beyond those two. It gets carried by the art, music, and gameplay, so I didn't mind this too much.

You can expect the main story to take maybe 20-25 hours to beat, but you could easily spend twice that long if not more on the game's side content/achievements if you really wanted to, not to mention the DLC and future update content. I didn't try and 100% the game because, again, this isn't really my preferred genre; but the fact that I still saw it through to the end despite that says a lot to me about its quality. Overall, Cassette Beasts is an incredibly charming game that feels familiar enough to appeal to long-time Pokémon fans, but distinct enough to draw in players like me who don't get the same enjoyment from the genre as they used to.

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This game was reviewed using Version 0.6. Your experience on other versions may vary.

It's not only one of the best fan works to come out of the Hololive community, but it's also a great bullet heaven game that's more than capable of standing on its own two feet. More content is planned to release in the future, but there's already enough here that you can easily dump a few dozen hours into it—and when you can get all that for free, there's no reason not to at least give it a try.

HoloCure is a bullet heaven game, and unofficial fan game, based on the virtual idols (also called "vtubers") of the Japanese company Hololive Productions. If that sentence made absolutely no sense to you, I suggest looking those terms up real quick so the rest of this review is easier to understand.

Anyway, the basic premise is that an unknown evil force has brainwashed all of their fans into becoming "mindless minions blinded by their love", and it's up to these idols to help them come back to their senses by…beating them up with a range of physical and magical attacks, naturally. You're not hurting them, you're saving them, I promise—besides, they probably like it either way.

If you've played a bullet heaven game like Vampire Survivors or Brotato before, then you already understand the basics of the gameplay: you wander around a map and auto-attack a virtually endless horde of enemies, using the XP you earn to unlock new weapons and stat boosts to help you survive until the clock runs out. Each run, you can choose between one of three game modes: Stage Mode, the standard 20-minute run with a boss at the end; Endless Mode, which keeps going until you die; and Time Mode, where you need to complete an objective (e.g. "save" 4,000 fans) as fast as you can to achieve a high score. Given that I don't care much about leaderboards and my spare time is limited, Stage Mode is my go-to whenever I've got some time to kill. It's a good pick-up-and-play game that you can mess with between other activities, which also makes it a perfect Steam Deck game.

Practically every visual asset and piece of flavor text—weapons, items, abilities, enemy designs, you name it—is rooted both in Hololive's official character lore and the individual communities that have developed for each vtuber. Long-time fans will find callbacks to some of the oldest inside jokes and memes to come out of the community at large, and I'd wager even the most devoted of them will still have a few fly over their head given how densely packed it is. With all that being said, I don't think you need to be some diehard Hololive fan—or even know what Hololive is, really—to enjoy this game. Sure, you'll miss out on a lot of the underlying humor, but just as much thought was put into the actual "game" side of this fan project as everything else, ensuring that there's still a fun, content-rich experience behind all the niche fandom references.

As of writing, there are 38 available characters, and the breakdown is only gonna make sense if you're a Hololive fan: right now you can play as everyone from HoloJP gens 0, 1, 2, and GAMERS; HoloEN's Myth and Council/Promise; and HoloID's Area 15, Holoro, and HoloH3ro groups. You'll start with only the five from HoloEN Myth and will have to unlock the rest via the Character Gacha in the upgrades menu—don't worry, you're not spending any real money on this gacha, just HoloCoins you earn through normal gameplay. I would strongly recommend putting at least some of your coins into this gacha early, because each character comes with different base stats, skills, and a unique weapon that can significantly change how you play the game. I've cleared at least one level in Stage Mode with every character at this point, making sure to only use their unique weapon to get a better sense of how they differ from one another; and now I feel confident in saying that there are no bad characters in this entire lineup, which is an insane feat for a game like this. At worst, they'd all sit comfortably in the "good" tier with a few that are strong enough to go in a higher tier; but none of them ever felt legitimately bad or underpowered compared to the rest.

On top of the base game, you've also got a bit of side content you can play with to both earn and spend your HoloCoins between runs, all of which you can access by selecting the "Holo House" button in the main menu. By far my favorite is the rhythm-based fishing minigame because I'm a sucker for fishing in video games, but also because you can earn a stupid amount of coins from it if you work your way up to the top-tier rod. You've also got a house you can decorate with furniture bought with coins, a garden to grow food used for other content at the House, a cooking pot to craft meals that grant buffs during base game runs, and a worker…farm(?) that lets you earn coins passively provided you keep your workers fed with food/fish.

As far as negatives go, I don't really have any aside from the fact that the game is technically unfinished, but there's still enough content here that it already feels like a complete experience. The biggest concern with a game so deeply rooted in an internet fandom is that it may prioritize pandering to that fandom over trying to be something that can stand on its own, but that's not the case here. You could strip away all of the Hololive assets and replace them with something completely original, and you'd still be left with a bullet heaven game that could compete with some of the best in the genre.

More content is planned in the future, including but not limited to the planned inclusion of every remaining Hololive talent as playable characters, so there's a lot to look forward to on top of how much you can already play today. It's wild to think that all of this was done by a single person solely as a passion project, and the fact that it's free feels almost criminal given how much time I've spent on it. Sure, part of it is for legal reasons given that developer Kay Yu doesn't own the rights to these characters, but still. Whether you're a fan of Hololive or just a fan of bullet heavens, I think there's a good chance that HoloCure could become your next gaming addiction.

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This game was reviewed using Versions 1.03. Your experience on other versions may vary.

I'd argue that it's more of a stealth/action game than a horror game like the marketing says, but I actually liked it more because of that. The stealth-oriented archery gameplay is a lot of fun and the game's open world has a great aesthetic to it, even if it is a pain to navigate without a map. It's being actively patched to fix the community's biggest complaints, which has already addressed most of the complaints I had during my 20-hour run, so definitely keep an eye on it even if you don't plan to pick it up right now.

NOTE: Players that are deaf or hard of hearing will need to skip this one (for now) as spatial sound is a critical component of the gameplay. Accessibility options are said to come in a future update.

The Axis Unseen is a "heavy metal horror game" where you play as a lone hunter in a world inhabited by monsters from all manner of ancient folklore. At first, your goal is unclear—all you know is that you need to explore and survive in order to achieve it. Everything that lives and/or breathes in this world can kill you, but with your trusty bow and and a range of powers bestowed upon you by forces unknown, you might just have what it takes to fight back. I found this game through its demo during the recent Next Fest, and I ended up liking it enough to buy the full game on launch even though I'm not a fan of horror games; but I'll get into why that is in a minute.

The core gameplay is this mix of open-world exploration, stealth mechanics, and archery-based combat. Without spoiling any story details, your general goal is to travel to points of interest that slowly lead you further and further into new, more hostile environments. The key points of interest are marked by beams of light and unlock passive abilities that aid you in travel; while straying off the beaten path lets you find stronger equipment, new arrow types for your bow, magic spells with a range of effects, and letters from other inhabitants that clue you in on the game's lore. Most upgrades you'll receive are geared towards improving your stealth capabilities, whether that means helping you bypass a potential fight or starting it yourself with a sneak attack from a distance. Being truly stealthy can be difficult as enemies can track you based on sight, sound, and even smell; but it doesn't punish you too harshly if you make a mistake, often giving you a chance to either run away or fight back if you're spotted.

Another thing that can make stealth a challenge is the amount of information you need to keep track of at any given moment, but the game handles this in an interesting way. Rather than rely on a traditional HUD, stuff like your health, stamina, noise level, and active abilities are instead displayed through symbols on your bow and the hand that's holding it. It might take a bit to get used to as it's not immediately obvious what everything represents, but it's a really cool approach to an often-overlooked part of game design that ends up lending itself to the immersion. It also helps prevent visual clutter on the screen, which is especially helpful since hunting monsters can and will demand your undivided attention.

Like I said before, the in-game world is filled with monsters rooted in folklore from all across the real world. A quick search of some of the names in my journal point me to Japanese, Chilean, South Slavic, Inuit, and Australian Aboriginal mythologies, just to name a few. Suffice to say that there's a lot of variety, and this extends to both their in-game designs and their mechanics. Each monster has strengths and weaknesses that you can exploit, and it's even possible to kill some monsters with a single shot if you have the right gear and steady aim. This brand of stealth-focused combat ended up being a ton of fun, and gaining the knowledge/ability to take down something that used to wipe the floor with me was just as satisfying in my first few hours as it was in the very last. The only complaint I have in this department is that the monster AI can be a little funky at times, a good example being how they get confused if you're standing on something above the ground like a large boulder. Admittedly, this worked in my favor more often than not, but it did take away the tension from certain encounters—though it's not the only thing to do so.

I mentioned earlier that I picked this game up despite the fact that I don't like horror games, and that's because even during my time with the demo, it never really felt like I was playing a horror game. Part of it is just that I think the design of the environments and monsters look more cool than scary, though both do manage to up the scariness over time. More importantly, though, I think what makes a game feel truly scary is its ability to instill an overwhelming sense of helplessness in the player, something that's missing from The Axis Unseen. Sure, your first encounter with a new monster is always nerve-wracking, and there's still a tension to most encounters after that; but the true fear factor wears off once you recognize that even your worst nightmares can bleed. Even though had its scary moments and it got a few good jumps out of me, overall it felt more like a stealth/action game than a horror game—but that's exactly why I liked it. I'm only framing this as a potential negative because even though it made the game more aligned to my tastes, it makes it harder to recommend to someone who's looking for a more traditional horror game—at the very least, I wouldn't go into it expecting a very scary game given that a wuss like me could handle it just fine.

As much as I enjoyed the bulk of the game, I did have my gripes as well. I won't waste time discussing all of them since most have already been addressed in post-launch updates—including an update that popped up as I was writing this, funny enough—but a consistent issue during my playthrough that is still present is the difficulty of navigation. It's easy to lose your bearings since you don't get a map to consult, especially when the environments start becoming less linear. Those beams of light help give you a general sense of where to go next, but there are a lot of upgrades in-between them that are shockingly easy to miss. That's not limited to little stuff like arrow capacity upgrades, either—I had to get a hint from the forums to find one of the unlockable arrows because it was so far out of the way of the path I'd been taking (this was one of the subjects of the latest update, thankfully), and I even managed to skip over an equipment upgrade entirely despite spending several hours in the area it was supposed to be in. This is also assuming that you even know what you're looking for, so a word of advice: look for massive pillars with a light on them, giant spindly trees with no leaves, and any spot with a flock of birds circling overhead—basically everything important is at one of those.

The Axis Unseen may have issues that led to some frustration on my end, but I wouldn't have spent nearly 20 hours on it if I didn't enjoy the experience overall. The fact that it was made pretty much entirely by a single developer is just insane—a 20-year industry veteran that worked at Bethesda, sure, but that doesn't make it any less impressive to me. It's actively being patched to resolve the more glaring problems that have come to light since release, and I've even seen mention of adding accessibility options for the deaf and hard of hearing, so I'd still keep it on your radar even if you're on the fence about picking it up right now.

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