Recent reviews by Stolen Goods

cuphead wario

A delightfully charming arcade game with an excellent soundtrack. If either Tim Follin or Donkey Kong but backwards sound appealing, you'll love this.

Note: Steam Deck compatibility seems to be broken at time of writing. Fingers crossed it'll be fixed soon!

I am 2/3rds of the way through Inscryption and the game is a perfect example of why I wish Steam allowed for a more nuanced recommendation system than a binary yes or no.

The TL;DR: Inscryption is an amalgam of multiple games. One is a great game screaming to be developed into an amazing game. One is... spoilery, but the long and short of it is that it does not follow up that great game very well in my opinion.

Unfortunately this game is nigh-impossible to review in-depth without spoilers, so be warned.

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Inscryption: The Roguelite (Act 1) is a great game that I wish were longer and more fleshed out, perhaps with ideas from the similar-but-different games that follow it. It begins very well-paced and engaging, mechanically-sound, audiovisually and thematically stunning, and there's something new around the corner to keep you going. This is all readily apparent if you watch an hour of gameplay footage, and you don't need me to elaborate on this. It's great and it speaks for itself.
If, however, you're a card game veteran, you may find yourself breezing through the game at a certain point and be left wanting for challenge. The pacing started to drag for me after I defeated the "final boss" for the first time (on my fourth or fifth run, about four hours in) and I had effectively solved this game (Act 1, specifically), with little new content left in it, and some repetition grinding on me (the game even pokes fun at itself for this). This is what I mean by "a great game screaming to be developed into an amazing game." There is a ton of potential here and I desperately want more of it - more replayability. I then moved on and continued the story.

Inscryption: The CCG (Act 2) is an unfortunately fundamentally flawed game that is made less enjoyable by a far less user-friendly experience than the game that preceded it.
In my opinion and admittedly limited experience with Act 2, the Inscryption system does not lend itself to a constructed deck format nearly as well as it does a limited/roguelite system, and stumbles upon pitfalls that many CCGs before have. Notably, Act 2 inherits the biggest bugbear from Magic: The Gathering - resource-screw - and amplifies it, making dead draws and casting costs absolutely brutal, and your opening hands extremely swingy (with only an unlockable mulligan option). This is in direct contrast to Act 1 where starting with only a pseudo-random hand and having the choice of drawing squirrels versus drawing a random card was a sublime experience that lent itself to great, tense decision-making. This is tempered by you being able to immediately retry any duels you fail, but this itself just means there are no stakes whatsoever to anything that happens in Act 2. You just waste a mildly annoying two minutes or so, and try again. I could accept that Act 2 is meant to be more of a "chill" puzzle game than Act 1, but RNG elements fly in the face of that and make the whole ordeal frustrating. There's not even an attempt at a flashy boss battle at the end of Act 2 that might test every skill you've (supposedly) learned while playing it (the closest you get is whatever Scrybe you fight last) - it's a predictable scripted death, quickly and unceremoniously segueing into Act 3.
Act 2 is also dramatically less user-friendly than Act 1, with a pile of new mechanics that are not explained nearly as well as Leshy does in Act 1. Your only resource to truly learn new mechanics beyond trial-and-error are low-res, pixelated tooltips that you now have to *scroll* through because the font won't fit all the text on the screen. The four duels in each dungeon (one of which is a boss with a unique mechanic that you will probably die to the first time because it destroys your board without warning or something) that pull from each mechanical suite are a far cry from actual tutorials. I still only barely comprehend how the circuits mechanic works. I feel there are interesting individual mechanics that could be cherry-picked and plopped into Act 1's roguelite framework. So with that said, I do not feel that I have mastered Act 2, or even grok certain mechanics in it at all, and I have no desire to return to it.
Beyond that, the graphics and aesthetic are a very clear downgrade from Act 1 here. Like, I get it, I can appreciate kinda-scummy pixel art, and it's there for a reason, but... it's still scuffed, and still a big downgrade, and just doesn't really help my frustration with Act 2 in general.
The music in Act 2's pretty alright, by the way.

Inscryption: The RPG: Son of the Roguelite starts off iffy but becomes quite enjoyable as you progress. It also leads into a satisfying ending. I liked it well enough.

Inscryption: The Story is an okay and generally well-acted spooky mystery story with an ARG thing going on.

Inscryption: Kaycee's Mod is the infinitely-replayable roguelikeification of Act 1 that everyone and their mother was asking for, and it's quite enjoyable even in beta.

TL;DR: Act 1 is fantastic, Act 2 is a mess, Act 3 is good, the ending and story are good, and Kaycee's Mod makes Act 1 replayable and challenging and makes recommending Inscryption much, much easier. 4/5 stars?

good

Played on Switch with a friend's copy, bought on Steam to support the devs as I played it to the end.

Ikenfell is clearly a labor of love and I also wanted to love it so much more than I ended up doing. This is a very conflicted review I'm making, and while ultimately I'm giving the recommendation, there are a lot of problems I have. The following are the biggest things that stuck out to me:

+ The soundtrack (and sound design) was the highest of highlights in Ikenfell for me, and up there with the best of 2020. I like or outright love just about everything in the OST. aivi & surasshu and everyone else who contributed to the audio for this game all did an amazing job. I won't bother singing it's praises, just listen to a few battle themes and thank me later. (Special note: Vocal tracks in games aren't always my thing, but It's Showtime! is a groove)
+ Spritework, character/enemy design, and animation were also great. No complaints there. New enemy designs pop up at a very frequent pace and I can't imagine how much work it was to animate all of those. Props.
+ Overall, the game has a lot of charm to it, which I suppose is to say that a lot of the elements work well together and get the dopamine pumping.
+ The gameplay concept is great. I love RPGs that reward good reflexes, and adding some SRPG grid combat is a great way to build on that. The game does a great job of easing you into its world and mechanics too.
- Unfortunately, I can really only say the concept is great, because it does not get fleshed out in the ways it needed to in order to justify its total playtime. At about 5 hours is when I felt the repetition set in, and it didn't go away (except maybe for part of the final boss, but even that suffers a lot). The spells, enemies, equipment, and dungeons from that point onward, while still lovingly animated and designed, offer little variety as far as gameplay goes. That I might've been able to march through, but enemies, especially bosses, become unforgivably damage-spongey ~7-8 hours in and I had to break out the Instant Victory option to see the game through to the end at all (thank god it was an option), as it was clear I could win (or rather, not lose) a battle, but dealing hundreds of points of damage to multiple boss phases was a total slog, chipping away at them, single digits at a time unless I grinded my way through similarly spongey standard enemies. And for the record, I tried my best to see what each new enemy had to offer before deciding to skip it or not. Enemy attack patterns quickly become samey, and bosses usually fell into the same trap of 2-3 phases, summoning samey minions, sometimes spawning damage-dealing traps that work about the same way every time. I particularly felt that the grid-based combat was not used to its full potential. Just a glance at Ikenfell's SRPG predecessors, Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics, show that there was potential missed. Traps and environmental hazards could've been a lot better.
- Over half the main team lacks a satisfying arc until briefly in the (quite heartwarming) epilogue, but then the game is over. Maritte and Pertisia are the only ones out of the team's six who I could say really had any growth at all over the course of the main game. Rook, Petronella, and Gilda started off promising, but fell by the wayside about halfway through the game (ESPECIALLY Gilda - poor thing barely does anything after joining the party, and is left just standing around very conspicuously and very awkwardly in one particular scene where she REALLY should've been rushing to comfort Maritte). Ima is the most underdeveloped of them all, having no meaningful purpose in the story (being easily substituted by anyone else in the team during a certain story event (or really any story event)) and having zero significant development, even getting passed over in the epilogue with, like, one still frame.
/ Finally, the game is pretty linear. You won't likely be revisiting old areas unless you're trying to hunt for items you missed the first time (or doing one midgame side thing that I personally didn't bother with, or going for a secret boss whom I believe I saved past my last chance to fight). Not the biggest deal but it's noticeable.

So ultimately, I got about 6 pretty good beginning hours, and the other 6 ranged from frustratingly uneventful to decent but samey. Was that worth the $16 I paid, and was it worth the time to experience the good bits? I give a heavy-hearted "yes," with the caveat that I'm not sure that I'd be giving Ikenfell's mid/lategame faults a """pass""", or that I'd have finished the game at all, without the Instant Victory option. You or others may fare better than I did.
All that said, I look forward to Happy Ray Games' future projects. It's clear that there's passion and talent here, and I hope that the team gained valuable experience (and some decent sales) with this game to make the next one the gem I think Ikenfell was close to being. I want to see another go at it.

Positives:

This game is very complex, and I'm speaking as a person who's played two hour, five person games of EDH in Magic regularly. It's not that the individual cards are terribly difficult to understand, but that there are so many little decisions to make at every point during a single round that can swing the game in your favor. If you've played many card games, Artifact will feel familiar but also novel enough to be worth playing compared to other games.

Unlimited, free phantom drafts are amazing. There's no other card game I know of that does this, and it makes the game so much more replayable after constructed inevitably loses its luster before each next set.

Compared to other CCGs/TCGs, the monetization model is far more consumer friendly. The $20 buy-in can be mitigated by just selling whatever cards you pull from your included 10 packs, and you're left with unlimited drafts (which I've found are the best part of most card games) and preconstructed gauntlets.
Even then, if you want to build a good constructed deck, you're not limited to cracking packs to get the cards you need, which is already an edge up on Hearthstone and MTGA and friends. Singles prices are currently, even just one day after launch, already way more reasonable than any other card game with a secondary market that I've played. Packs are better value as well.

Oh yeah the game itself is pretty fun all around I guess. Overall really engaging. There's pretty much no downtime in a match and that's a positive IMO.


Negatives:

A distinct lack of trading for no apparent reason on launch. My guess is it would lead to 3rd party trading sites which would have some complex impact on the community market's economy, but really, I'd hoped this would've been solved by launch.

A lack of a progression system of any kind. I mean, right now I like the game enough for what it is just to play it for fun, but building towards *something* would be appreciated. Just slap random cosmetic rewards into the game already and be done with it. It won't impact the actual card economy that y'all seem really intent on controlling.

A little buggy. Sometimes cards in the collection will overlap each other making everything unreadable. Sometimes the imps' transitions between animations are jumpy. Not too much of a big deal, but this was in closed beta for a while.

Obviously this will be resolved as more sets come out, but the card pool is pretty limited right now. Speaking of limited, Sealed would be nice to see in the future.

I'm personally not a fan of the improvement that gives units a 50% chance to survive lethal damage with 1 health left. I'm okay with RNG in moderation, but that's just way too swingy to be fun.

You can't pat the imps on the head.

Not a criticism of the game itself, but holy hell the advertising for Artifact has been abysmal. The first public tournament stream was a disaster, there's been pretty much no traditional advertisements anywhere online, and I don't know of any streamers that have been sponsored. Valve, I know you have the capital to do these things right. You got away with CS:GO being blegh for its first year and then built it up into what it is now with word of mouth ferrying it along to eventual success, but c'mon. The game itself is good, it's fun, and I think it's worth playing, so maybe do it some justice?


I still think Artifact is worth playing. But, like many multiplayer Valve games at launch, it's had a rocky start and needs a lot of work. I would still recommend it, but I certainly understand a lot of the ire it's drawn.

In its *current* state, Icons just doesn't do enough to compete with the now numerous options in the platform fighting genre.

Audiovisually, most of the game looks and sounds like a slightly-below-average MOBA. The designs at large are oppressively bland or outright bad, and in my book there's nothing worse than being middle of the road in terms of quality. There's really just not much to talk about here.

Mechanically, it's your bog standard, fast paced platform fighter. It plays like everyone's favorite Melee, with wavedashing and the works. But that's it. There's almost nothing new or innovative here besides that one shield mechanic, which just isn't enough. You already know exactly how this game plays.

Zhurong, Kidd, and Ashani are just Marth, Fox, and Captain Falcon with some PM-style tweaks made to their movesets here and there. Yes, almost half the (currently meager) cast is, almost move-for-move, just Melee allstars with a slightly-past-expiration-date coat of paint. For me personally, whenever I want to play with or against a Melee character, I just go play Melee. It is nothing new.

So the game looks and sounds like butt, it plays almost exactly like Melee with nothing but one minor mechanical addition, and almost half the cast is Melee allstars with a handful of tweaks.

So who exactly is this for?

Anyone looking to play Melee/PM is just going to keep playing Melee/PM.

Anyone looking for a fresh, fast-paced, mechanically deep platform fighter on PC already has Rivals of Aether and Slap City.

Anyone looking for a more casual game to slap people around in already has all the Smash games and Slap City.

Anyone just looking for a game with charming presentation has literally any other platform fighter on the market (sans PSASBR).

Verdict: This game claims to be targeted at the competitive platform fighter community, but it simply does not differentiate itself from the burgeoning number of competitive platform fighters out there to be worthwhile.

Just go play Melee, PM, Rivals of Aether, or Slap City. They're all cheaper and more interesting than Icons in its current state.

Pros:
Ultra Fishbunjin 3000
You can wavedash
You can multiflex
Aerial strong attacks?!
Lotta stages
Ultra Fishbunjin 3000
Arcade mode's pretty fun
AI is good?!
Netcode is good???!!!
Each character is pretty well balanced, for the most part
Ultra Fishbunjin 3000
Remedy's pretty cute too
Oh and Biz Caz Man is ridiculous and noodly and I greatly enjoy his presence in the game except when he juggles me for 20 seconds or longer
Ultra Fishbunjin 3000

Cons:
Arcade mode, fun as it is, could certainly use some work to avoid being so linear and samey each run.
Some animations are missing and/or wonky I guess, and some textures look weird or low-res like Remedy's eyes. It's Early Access.

Even with only six characters at the moment, Slap City is mechanically deep enough and so utterly charming that I feel I could get a good 30/40+ hours out of it at this point before I become tired. At $7 (as of writing), it's an absolute steal and I almost felt bad getting something with so much effort and care in it for so cheap.

+$3
+Pick-up-and-play, easy to learn, hard to master, all that kind of stuff. Very easy to hop in and out of at a whim, as expected of a well-designed mobile port.
+Rouge-lite elements give a sense of progression both within and out a run, e.g. Upgrades, gem unlocks.
+A decent sense of balance. No upgrades or weapons feel terribly overpowered from the getgo, unless you go out of your way to find a decent synergy which even then isn't gamebreaking. However...
-Some styles are clearly better or worse than others, like Levitate Style compared to Normal and Arm Spin to generally everything else. There's not much incentive to take the others beyond self-imposed challenge. Nothing's gamebreaking here, though.
+Three-tone pallet works well enough, enemies you can and can't stomp are clearly identifiable, leads to color pallets being rewards.
/Music's okay. I was more impressed with the sound design, though.

TL;DR: This is an honest-to-god game. It's not a terribly large game, but it's designed well, it's presented stylistically, there's never a dull moment, it's cheap, it's addictive, and for what limited content it offers, it is very replayable. I would definitely recommend this to anybody, and I look forward to the Android port.

A deceptively simple roguelike that you can get a decent number of hours racked up on. It isn't a huge game, but you can get easily sucked in like many others of its kind.