Recent reviews by Teacyn

If I had a nickel for every excellent game revolving around a 3-day time limit, a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up moon, and something named "Termina" I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice.

It's roguelite. it's Megaman X. It's gorgeous. What more you could want?

Good game overall. Falls apart somewhat in endgame and is too long in my opinion, but still a very good entry in the series.

gay gay homosexual gay

(It's really good, very cute with great music, interesting story and good writing, and fun gameplay)

This game is great. It's a lighthearted mix of furry and kink elements and a legitimately really solid beat-em-up platformer. Only real complaints I have are that checkpoints can be annoyingly far apart at times, and the overfilling mechanic can feel overly punishing early on (I wish it made your health drain fast based on how overfilled you are, rather than being an instant death).

Overall, a great experience if you're into these kinks, and if you find yourself interested despite not having them, why not give it a try anyway?

Good
+ Flagellant is an excellent class, very fun to play and gives much-needed Bleed DOT, which is lacking from the base roster.

+ New non-Curse trinkets are very nice

+ The enemies are interesting to fight, having them get stronger after certain attacks adds a lot of depth to how to tackle fights and adds a sense of urgency.

+ District system is good, gives late-game relic sinks and more decision-making with town development, as well as more uses for some weaker things.

Middling
(this also includes things that are questionable but I don't actually consider bad in a vacuum, though they often become obnoxious combined with other things)
~ I do appreciate the variety

~ Almost every CC enemy has a stress attack, or just has free stress infliction on actual attacks, making stress management vastly more difficult.

~ The Crocodile boss is practically a troll boss, having a low-warning attack that can deal upwards of 20 damage to your entire, Apprentice-Difficulty party, likely immediately bringing most of them to death's door. With proper management this isn't an issue since you can prevent it, but it's a really bad "haha gotcha" for new players.

~ I have yet to encounter The Fanatic, I won't pass judgement on him

~ I'm unsure if the Cocoons replace normal curios or are added on top, if they're added on top then ignore this, if they replace then treat this as a Bad because oh my god there are so many of them and they are completely useless unless you are truly desperate for Blood.

Bad
- Crimson Curse is potentially the most obnoxious game mechanic I have experienced in a very long time. Incurable, permanent disease that debuffs hero stats significantly no matter what you do, causes stress events constantly, causes your heroes to attack each other constantly, etc. It's basically like permanently being Afflicted with a milder version of every Affliction combined, and then you can get Afflicted on top of it which makes a hero completely nonfunctional. It's so common that 3/4 of your roster will end up infected unless you dismiss heroes with it, which puts a massive strain on your roster and funding anyway. You're even punished for treating it because Bloodlust has a bunch of potentially serious negative effects it also can cause, forcing you to either deal with those or deal with the constant stress bombs from Craving.

- The CC enemies appearing in other regions trashes party comps in a way you can't really account or compensate for. They're all extremely resilient to Blight and Debuffs (and moderately resistant to stuns), greatly weakening those abilities because any given encounter could be replaced with CC enemies. No skills or quirks give bonuses against CC enemies either, as they're a unique type. They also almost all have super high dodge, meaning you need either dodge reduction skills or very high accuracy.

- CC enemies are extremely fast, almost guaranteed to go first, making it even more difficult to avoid getting your entire party infected, and partially nullifying the sense of urgency and depth I mentioned as a good thing because enemies will always go so fast you can't take them out before they become a problem.

- Gatekeepers are so difficult to actually kill before they inflict a free 20+ stress on your entire party and then leave that it's infuriating.

- CC greatly diminishes the usefulness of the Shieldbreaker and Plague Doctor (and somewhat the Grave Robber), as now you can get heavily blight-resistant enemies anywhere.

The thing that finally pushed me to write this up was that I had an absolutely horrible apprentice-level dungeon venture that was completely caused by CC. Very first encounter was CC enemies, only one path so I can't retreat unless I abandon mission. Gatekeeper goes first with their obscene speed, immediately inflicts 20 stress and wrecks my party order, making me unable to do anything with two of my units. Two mosquitos inflict CC on two of my party members instantly. I kill one of them and Bleed the standing enemy with 20% protection (I'll remember names eventually). I miss a Bleed and Dodge debuff on the Gatekeeper. Gatekeeper goes first on round 2, immediately flees for free 20 stress on whole party and filling the field with more mosquitos. Entire party gets CC'd, Plague Doctor gets hyper-focused to death's door (thankfully doesn't die...), Plague Doctor also Afflicted despite coming in at zero stress.

Second encounter. Leper attacks teammates for 8+ damage two turns in a row, then passes turn on the third turn. Cascade of CC stress events causing my entire party to gain over 30 stress in two turns despite not being hit with any stress attacks. I flee battle and abandon mission before plague doctor has a heart attack and dies. Dismiss entire party because they're all level 0 or 1 and all have CC.

Could I have played this better? Almost certainly, I don't claim to be good at this game. But this still felt like a completely overwhelming combination of events I couldn't have "properly" reacted to, all caused by elements of this DLC that I already didn't like.

Conclusion

Buy this DLC on discount. You can disable Crimson Curse as a mechanic with mods which makes the rest of the DLC tolerable, or use mods to make CC far less annoying and more feature-rich. If you just want the Flagellant and/or Districts you can also do that. Do NOT use the full package for a first playthrough, only use Flagellant and Districts if anything. I'd recommend doing your second run on standard difficulty, and then drop back down to easy for your first run with this DLC if you do intend to use the entire thing.

(Have WAY more hours on mobile)

Overall a very good game. This game is not really a traditional TD game, it's more of an idle/grind game with TD as the gameplay loop. Enemies exponentially get stronger as waves go on, so eventually you will just run out of steam and fail regardless. Play, lose, spend currency on permanent upgrades, play, lose, upgrade, rinse, repeat. When you get to really high levels it starts being more of a traditional TD, as you have most or all of the upgrades and a ton of towers and "modifiers" (non-towers you can place that change how nearby things work) to work with and strategize with.

There's also a map editor for building your own levels, though I do feel one weak spot is that you have to earn tiles through random (but free) lootboxes and through random daily rewards. I've not interacted with this feature much.

While it's extremely grindy obviously, it's a fantastic time-killer and something great to have kind of ambiently playing while you do other stuff. I do recommend grabbing the Double Gain purchase to make the grind go a bit faster, it's not particularly expensive and helps quite a bit. Think of it as the price to get the "full" experience, since the game is free otherwise.

This game is incredibly difficult to recommend. It has so many cool ideas, so much potential, and such a heavy focus on replayability and mastering of gameplay that it's entirely feasible to get hundreds of hours out of, easily.

But the truth is? The game under that facade sucks. Most of the issues aren't immediately apparent to a new player, but as you play the game more and more they grow from annoyances to game-ruining.

- SEVERE balance issues that result in high-level matches being the exact same killers over and over and over again because most of the killers are gravely underpowered and generally incapable of dealing with meta survivor builds (which are also 90% of what you see at this level, be prepared to see the same 4-6 perks over and over and over again on every survivor and killer).

- Varying levels of technical issues resulting in everything from bad framerates to mid-match hitches (which can immediately ruin a match and are infuriating) to minor inconvenience bugs to game-breaking bugs. It's even worse on Console, with the XBOX One and PS4 versions of the game having major performance issues at almost all times, long load times, and frequent hitches. The Nintendo Switch version is effectively unplayable.

- Neverending stagnation and lack of major change. Response to issues is glacially slow, with even major bugs taking weeks to patch sometimes. Balance changes come once in a blue moon and are usually tiny adjustments to mostly irrelevant things, like buffing perks that are completely useless to make them... situationally useful at best. There have been no major changes to the game's structure in the past 2 years, with no new gamemodes or anything to break up the monotony. Communication from developers is minimal, customer support is minimal.

- Obnoxious DLC + Microtransaction structure that requires frequently dumping considerable amounts of money for new content, thankfully most older content goes on sale semi-frequently. Skins are completely outrageously priced and have no free way to earn them

- Beyond absurd amounts of grinding. It literally takes *thousands* of hours worth of grinding to level up every killer and survivor, and even more beyond that to prestige them.

- Severe cheater problems at a high level. Game is incredibly poorly locked down with cheaters being able to modify almost every single element of it. Most cheaters are blatant thankfully, doing things like instantly healing or doing Generators far too quickly, or preventing killers from picking them up. However, some cheaters will instead hold the game "hostage" by stopping the end-game timer from beginning, and sitting out of bounds to force the killer to leave the game and lose all points and get a matchmaking ban. It is also highly suspected and commonly theorized that there are large amounts of small-scale cheating going on at a high level, which is nearly undetectable.

- Developers have openly supported Cryptocurrency and NFTs, going as far as to include DLC codes with NFTs.

**Game:** Supraland
**Overall Rating:** 7.5-8/10
**Gameplay Rating:** 8.5-9/10
**World/Level Design Rating:** 8-8.5/10
**Writing Rating:** 5/10
**Technical Rating:** 7/10
**Graphical Rating:** 7.5/10
**What is the game?** Supraland is a first-person metroidvania-style puzzle platformer. The best quick-comparison I have is that it's Metroid Prime + Portal. The game focuses mainly on exploration + platforming and puzzle-solving, with combat primarily serving to break up the puzzles.

**Core Gameplay (+ Puzzles)**
At its core, Supraland is a puzzle game. You will spend the majority of your time trying to solve puzzles. These puzzles are sometimes clearly marked, other times navigating a specific environment is the puzzle. Puzzles consist primarily of attempting to either reach difficult-to-access areas to press buttons (which will permanently open the way, you almost never have to re-solve puzzles), or finding a way to activate various special switches that require more than a press to use.

Puzzles are solved primarily using your tools that you receive throughout the game (most of which double as weapons). Puzzles are generally quite well designed and feel satisfying to solve. There were very few areas I legitimately felt confused or stuck, and several of them ended up being me massively overcomplicating a simple solution. Puzzles become quite challenging by the end of the game, requiring usage of most or all of your tools.

Supraland goes by a philosophy that the difficulty of a puzzle should be mentally solving it and understanding the idea behind it, not executing the solution. Most puzzles only take 20-30 seconds to solve once you figure them out and have minimal execution challenge, which I think really helps prevent them from getting overbearing. There is one specific exception in Carrot Town, a late part of the game, that has rather obnoxious execution that frustrated me.

Metroidvanias often struggle with getting upgrades that rapidly become meaningless once you clear the area you get them, occasionally using them to get a small upgrade and that’s it. Supraland does not struggle with this. You will use everything you get from the time you get it until the end of the game.

**Combat**

Combat is the lesser element of the game, and primarily serves to break up monotony and give upgrades a purpose. I hope future installments expand on the combat further, to give upgrades more meaning and to encourage use of different weapons instead of just shooting everything. Combat is fast paced but simple, consisting of running and jumping around simple enemies. It is described as “quake-like” by the game, and while that isn’t inaccurate it lacks the technical depth of Quake combat and lacks challenge and variety. The two bosses are neat, acting as puzzles more than fights, though the final boss has non-gameplay issues.

**Exploration, The World, and Platforming**

This is the other main element of the game, and is generally very solid all around. Exploration consists of navigating the literal magical sandbox world (complete with “giant” actually normal sized kid!). There are a handful of main areas.

Fast Travel is present (and very welcome) but consists entirely of physical travel. No teleporting across the map here. You will be able to activate various jump pads during the game that when used, will fling you across massive chunks of the map at once, allowing you to quickly travel between areas. This is technically impressive since extremely little slowdown is noticed during it, and is enjoyable as well as it allows you to get a sense of scale of the world and can also be useful for remembering things you need to go back and do later. You will also occasionally find pipes you can unlock, which will allow you to quickly travel between two physically nearby areas.

Platforming is responsive and enjoyable, if a bit simplistic. Most platforming sections don’t make use of your tools much, as the platforming is built into the world itself for the most part. Controls feel good and are floaty enough to have weight but I almost never found myself overshooting or undershooting jumps.

The main flaw that Exploration has is the “out of bounds” secret hunting. Since the entire world is a physical location, you can reach almost literally every part of it with the right movement and tools. This includes the tops of areas, random nooks and crannies on walls, and the connectors between areas, which you normally can’t access. You almost never hit an invisible wall. This would be neat, except for one problem.

The game hides numerous secrets in these awkward to reach random areas. Many of which require such awkward movements and wall-hugging you feel like there’s absolutely no way you’re supposed to be doing this, only to randomly stumble upon a chest or a bunch of coins. The developer seemed to be aware this wouldn’t be supremely popular, as the stuff found in these secrets is ALL extremely minor. +1 damage, +5 Max HP, a bundle of coins, etc. This element of the game is poor. I sincerely hope in future titles this “mechanic” is either properly expanded on to be less annoying and feel less like you’re breaking the game, or removed entirely. The only thing that makes this tolerable is the fact you get a Chest Detector at the end of the game, and there’s several upgrades you can get for it after beating the game.

**Writing**

It’s incredibly average. There’s nothing to really write home about here.

The basic story is that you’re a Red who lives in Red Town, the son of the King and Queen. Your water suddenly runs dry. You go down to investigate and spot some Blues destroying your Water Pipe. The rest of the game consists of trying to reach Blueville and figure out why the Blues destroyed your water pipe, and then solving the actual issue after you figure that out. The story is incredibly basic and primarily serves as a reason for the gameplay to happen, which is fine. The worldbuilding is pretty minimal, though the actual world is pretty interesting since it’s a giant magical sandbox.

The actual moment-to-moment dialog is the reason I rate this low. The majority of it is nothing with meta jokes and references thrown in. Good lord this game has so many random references. From helping Minecraft Steve get a diamond pickaxe to stealing meth from Walter White to taking hair off of “Him-man”. They don’t help the game at all and get a little tiring, though they at least don’t affect gameplay. At the end of the game, the humor becomes rather scatological, which drives my opinion of the writing even lower.

**Technical and Graphics**

The game is technically competent though nothing special, and the graphics are much the same. The game runs acceptably most of the time though certain areas can chug a little. I’m fairly certain I had at least one puzzle solution break on me, though the game’s mobility systems are robust enough I was able to bypass it. I got softlocked one time while doing the aforementioned secret hunting. At one point a story sequence broke, but reloading a save fixed it.

The graphics are a bit “Stock UE4”, but are passable. I do wish things were more stylized overall. I enjoy the fact that most of the environment is everyday objects that seem gigantic because you’re a tiny stickman. The enemies are definitely the most glaring artistic outlier, being so much of one a friend of mine who watched me stream the early areas thought they were a stock asset from the UE4 store. Bloom is vastly overdone and contributes to that “Stock UE4” look.

Overall, these aspects of the game are pretty impressive given the vast majority of the game was made by one person. Props to ya’.

**Conclusion**

Overall, I greatly enjoyed Supraland. While it definitely has its flaws and shortcomings, I would not hesitate to recommend this game to a friend who is interested or has shown interest in similar games before. Though, I might warn them to not waste time looking for obscure secrets.

An absolutely incredible game. I wasn't able to finish it due to the horror-esque elements and my anxiety going through the roof, but I don't think I wasted a cent. Finished the game via a playthrough on youtube. Play this one as blind as possible.