Recent reviews by JimDeadlock

Rust has a reputation for being toxic, but in my opinion that's because all new players go straight to the high-pop official servers and immediately get rekt by the rude kids who play there. If you try some of the thousands of community/modded servers you will soon find a very pleasant gaming experience if that's what you prefer.

Another thing to note is that Rust retains it popularity year after year because it's constantly evolving and improving. There is a feature update every single month, it keeps players coming back for more.

Cheap and satisfying

Nice relaxing no-brainer to pass the time. Not particularly challenging.

Lovely graphics and challenging puzzles with new mechanics introduced throughout. The puzzles are difficult enough that you have to mull them over for a while but they're not so impossible that you have to look up solutions. Just perfect.

The first time you play you'll die a lot, finish the game in about 15 minutes and be surprised at how short it was. But that's only the beginning. It's like those old-school platformers where you want to play it over and over again to master it completely and get a 'clean' run. There are several characters with different abilities, so once you've perfected the game with one character you can move on to the next, and there are achievements for mastering the game in all these different 'modes'.

It runs flawlessly on Linux/Proton, including controller.

The dev is the most enthusiastic I've ever seen in the history of Steam. Sign up for the newsletter and they come thick and fast!

Overall, a nice platformer whether you're a casual player or hardcore, and for this price it's a no-brainer, go ahead and buy it.

Updating for my Steam Autumn Sale badge... it's 39p now!

There’s a short tutorial to learn the controls and then you’re straight into the match play. There’s no practice table option, although personally I don’t think I would ever use it, even if it was available. You get all the practice you need while playing career matches.

The most important thing with games like this is the controls, and I’m pleased to report that here they are easy to learn and very intuitive. You first line up the shot from a top-down view, setting the power, cue ball spin and lining up the direction, then you left-click to go down on the shot which allows you to make a fine line adjustment before taking the shot (or you can get up off the shot if you change your mind).

The rules and physics of the game are all done perfectly. For example, it won’t let you dig down on the ball if you’re tight on the cushion, and if you put some side on it changes the path of the object ball (if you have the visual aids on).

There are four gameplay modes: quick match vs AI; single-player career mode; unranked online match vs humans; online tournament (with leaderboards).


You can choose which professional you want to play as. There’s customisation for clothing and cue design but no option to create your own character, provoking rage among some Steam reviewers. I would like to ask them, if they were playing a AAA sports game like FIFA, would they want to create their own anonymous character instead of Ronaldo or Messi? No, I thought not.

Much of the negative criticism on Steam has been related to the graphics of the off-table features. Not enough cutscenes, not enough camera shots of the crowd, poor rendering of the players’ faces, they say… Well, while I do agree that the faces are not very lifelike compared to some other AAA games, they are still recognisable. Apart from that, 99% of the time you’re concentrating on the table, so any other peripheral stuff is pointless and irrelevant. In my opinion the devs quite rightly devoted their time to getting the table right instead of wasting unnecessary man-hours making the scenery look pretty. This isn’t an open-world adventure game where you’re out to admire the flowers. You get 100% immersion at the table, and that’s all that matters.

There’s commentary – a limited number of responses, as you’d expect, but plenty to satisfy the general atmosphere. The commentator sounds like someone I recognise – is it Neal Foulds? If the devs did decide to flesh out the peripherals of the game, I would argue that extra commentary would be the way to go, rather than graphics – get John Virgo on the job! Where’s the cue ball going?!!


In career mode you choose your match length, difficulty (opponent strength) and level of visual aids you want at the start of your career. Once you’ve selected your settings you are then locked in for the duration of your career, there’s no switching up the difficulty mid-career. In amateur mode you have all the aiming graphics that allow you to line up the shot, predict the cue ball position and even see the curved path of the ball when you put side on. As you move up the settings you get fewer aids until you reach the ultimate mode – no visuals at all, just the cue!

For a giggle, I tried a match on hard with no aids. It was a farce. I couldn’t pot anything. Not that I had many chances, since I only got one or two shots before I had to sit there watching Mark Williams clear up with a century break. It was back to Easy with Amateur aids for me after that.

Even with full blown aids (sorry) it’s still not as easy as you might think. The more angle, the wider your arc gets, and the cue ball prediction is really only good for direction, not pace. As for escaping snookers off the cushions, the aids don’t help you with that even on Amateur, so I’ve found that particularly tricky to get to grips with.

The key to the game is getting used to the cue ball pace (as in the real-life game, of course). Once you’ve got that sussed you’ll be making the big breaks. Until then, your cue ball will be all over the place and you’ll be playing a lot of long shots.

On the flip side, the AI is an absolute master of pace no matter what difficulty you choose. Every shot is perfectly positioned to the millimetre, and you’ll nearly always find yourself tight on the baulk cushion when the AI plays a safety. I haven’t noticed any difference between the AI players – Ronnie is no tougher than any of the newcomers – but I think this makes sense because it would defeat the purpose of setting your difficulty at the start of the game if you ended up being thrashed mercilessly by Selby anyway.

The difference between Easy/Medium/Hard is simply how often the AI misses a shot. He will play perfect snooker with some amazing shots, then all of a sudden miss an easy one for no apparent reason. It seems a bit unnatural but in the end it doesn’t really matter because you still get your shot regardless. On Easy (which I’ve been playing almost exclusively) I’ve found that the AI always gives you a fighting chance, and I suspect that his misses are based on the current score rather than the shot difficulty (this would make sense programming-wise).

There’s a striking difference between playing the AI in career mode, and playing a human online. You can predict the difficult shots the human might miss, and it feels much more natural. With that said, the humans I’ve played so far had many hours clocked on their Steam profiles and wiped the floor with me! I will have my revenge though.


There are many complaints about the price on Steam reviews. If this was a generic snooker game then I would probably agree, but you have to bear in mind that it’s officially licensed and uses images of all the professional players you know and love throughout. That doesn’t come cheap. These celebrity sportsmen all have to be paid, and that’s where your money is going. When you compare the price to some of these AAA football games it seems a lot cheaper, doesn’t it? Apart from anything else, it’s not like this game has any competition on Steam. It’s more or less alone in its genre. Take it or leave it.


There’s a nice collection of achievements to keep you going for a long time, and full controller support – although you must be “snooker loopy nuts (are we)” if you want to do it that way. Keyboard/mouse is the best method.

The store page says there is Steam Cloud support, but beware, I reinstalled Windows and was dismayed to discover that my career progress was wiped.


I want to congratulate the PR department on their obvious knowledge of the game and amazing predictions regarding the images used on the store page and in-game.

First of all, Mark Williams was cheesed off about not appearing in the title image on the store page. Well, Mark, sorry to break it to you but you were the 2018 champ and this game relates to 2019. I think deep down you knew you had no chance, with your comments about lightning striking twice and naked cartwheels etc.

Lo and behold, there is the accurately-predicted 2019 champion with his hand almost touching the trophy. Not only that, but the in-game image (see below) is even more perfect, with both finalists Trump and Higgins right there at the front, with Ronnie and Selby pushed to the back! Good call!!


For me, Snooker 19 has been a LONG TIME COMING, but now it’s here I think it was well worth the 20 year wait. I love it! The controls and gameplay are perfect. All your favourite players are in it. You can play humans online if you want, or hone your skills and try for the achievements by yourself.

Thankfully I have 1,600+ other games in my Steam library (including Rust!) to distract me, otherwise I would be seriously worried about relapsing into my old baize addiction.

First of all, the description of this game is misleading. It's not a puzzle game, there is no brainwork involved at all. It's about mouse control. You have to move the dot to the exit without touching the borders. That's it.

The achievements are ridiculous. It would make sense for this game to base achievements on win streaks, but no, you get one for each level regardless of whether you win, lose or even attempt it. The nature of the game means that it's actually much quicker to get the achievements by instantly FAILING. That's where we are with achievements now - failure is an achievement.

So let's ignore the achievement situation for now, and look at whether this game does actually present a challenge. There are 100 achievements, so there must be increasing challenge for 100 levels, right? Wrong. You get an extra "wall" for every 5 wins streak. The trouble is, it tops out at 5 walls maximum, so by level 20 you've seen everything the game has to offer. The most annoying thing is that this is the point where it starts to get (slightly) challenging! It does keep track of your personal best win streak so in theory you can chase that. However, there's really no point in doing so due to the low difficulty plateau.

Value/play time? Well, if you play it properly and win 100 levels (the last 80 of them being basically the same) then you'll get 30 minutes out of it. If you're just in it for the achievements then you can easily get a 100 loss streak within 10 minutes and clean them all up. If this was intended as achievement fodder then why not give it the maximum number allowed, whatever that number is these days? But it even fails at that really.

On the plus side, the app is stable; graphics are pleasant enough; UI is simple, functional and unobtrusive; screen resolution is windowed or full with wide variety and goes up to 1920x1200 (thank you). It even runs flawlessly on Proton (Linux).

In the end, I wouldn't call it a fake game - I've seen much worse - but it's borderline. I wouldn't recommend it, unless you just want the cheevos. The most fun I got out of it was writing this review.

Comments are open, if you have anything to say.

First of all, the description of this game is misleading. It's not a puzzle game, there is no brainwork involved at all. It's about mouse control. You have to move the dot to the exit without touching the borders. That's it.

The achievements are ridiculous. It would make sense for this game to base achievements on win streaks, but no, you get one for each level regardless of whether you win, lose or even attempt it. The nature of the game means that it's actually much quicker to get the achievements by instantly FAILING. That's where we are with achievements now - failure is an achievement.

So let's ignore the achievement situation for now, and look at whether this game does actually present a challenge. There are 100 achievements, so there must be increasing challenge for 100 levels, right? Wrong. You get an extra "wall" for every 5 wins streak. The trouble is, it tops out at 5 walls maximum, so by level 20 you've seen everything the game has to offer. The most annoying thing is that this is the point where it starts to get (slightly) challenging! It does keep track of your personal best win streak so in theory you can chase that. However, there's really no point in doing so due to the low difficulty plateau.

Value/play time? Well, if you play it properly and win 100 levels (the last 80 of them being basically the same) then you'll get 30 minutes out of it. If you're just in it for the achievements then you can easily get a 100 loss streak within 10 minutes and clean them all up. If this was intended as achievement fodder then why not give it the maximum number allowed, whatever that number is these days? But it even fails at that really.

On the plus side, the app is stable; graphics are pleasant enough; UI is simple, functional and unobtrusive; screen resolution is windowed or full with wide variety and goes up to 1920x1200 (thank you). It even runs flawlessly on Proton (Linux).

In the end, I wouldn't call it a fake game - I've seen much worse - but it's borderline. I wouldn't recommend it, unless you just want the cheevos. The most fun I got out of it was writing this review.

Comments are open, if you have anything to say.

I got this for only 39p and I'll make most of that back from the trading cards so I can't complain too much, but if you want to know what this is like as a game, I've played it a few times now and it goes like this:

1. Customise your character and give her a giant pair of boobs.

2. Run around for 20 seconds in the pitch blackness.

3. Get killed by an invisible monster.

The end.

I insta-bought this as soon as I saw the name Maciej Targoni on the store page. I was not disappointed. Excellent work as usual!