Recent reviews by - ̗̀n o o k ̖́-

This review does not contain any spoilers.


The charming art direction is obvious from a glance, and so is the voice acting right off the bat, it has a lot of charm. For the past day I have been thinking in the Cryptmaster's voice and making Cryptmaster iMpRrreSsiOnS with friends, and probably will do so for a good while!

The mechanic of typing out words to attack and interact is brilliant and the Cryptmaster has a LOT of reactions to what you do, the variety and range of recognised words is staggering. I personally really enjoy the guessing mechanic (under the names of each character is a word you have to guess and you get letters for these from combat and loot), and the riddles, and love that names have a role to play; your characters' names are their HP (4 letters = 4 HP) and enemies can be dealt extra damage to by using skills that deal extra damage to specific letters (for example, you may get a skill that will do +1 extra damage for every letter "A" in the enemy's name).

There is a very interesting fishing mechanic, and a card game, both of which make use of typing.

All-in this game is very unique and clever, I am excited to see the rest of it. It's a real gem!

The complexity is really stunning and seemingly never-ending. Everything, down to the animals and plants have needs and wants. You don't get to control NPCs at all, which allows you to fully focus on building and supply chains.

My favourite thing about the game so far is that there are different maps you control AT THE SAME TIME each with different biomes and some with different resources. You can send people to these different maps and set up trade with factions if there are any on them. Your resources are not automatically shared between the maps, you have to set up what to send where via the marketplace which adds a nice challenge to having multiple settlements.

There are some QoL features that would be nice and I'm sure they're coming, from what I can see the developers are eager listeners to their community, and I am so excited to see where this game will go. Can't wait to play it more!

This review does not contain any spoilers.


JETT is an unconventional, religious sci-fi game about a group of people paving the path to ensure the future of their species. I recommend this game with caution as I understand that some of what it does may put people off:

• The tutorial is overly long and after having played both the base game and the Given Time expansion, I believe it could teach a more.
  
  
• It's a very slowburn game. Inbetween you completing an objective and getting the next one, there's a pause that sometimes feels too long. This is an overarching theme in the game, sometimes after a cutscene ends, the camera fades to black slowly.
  
  
• The vehicle you control has two modes and the controls take some time getting used to. There are some things that the game won't explicitly teach you, and you might only figure them out in Given Time (more on this below) because of the challenges it puts you against.
  
  
• I read that a lot of people are irritated by your co-pilot talking too much, and it is true, he does talk a lot. Once I spent a few hours with him and got to know him, I was able to differentiate between important information (ie new task) and commentative chatter (ie talking about what's happening or giving hints), which helped me decide when to divert my attention away from my main focus to reading his subtitles.
  
  
• The game's spoken audio is in a made up language. Personally I am super impressed with it; having spent ~24 hours with the game, I developed some grasp of its grammar and some of its vocabulary (it's well constructed, and not just some voice actor saying random habla babla) but I also understand that some people would prefer if the voiceover was in a language they can understand.
  
  
• There are some bugs. Thankfully I haven't encountered anything actually game-breaking, but I managed to get under the terrain a few times and I had to restart the game once towards the end of Given Time where the FPS dropped below 10 (I had stable 60 during the rest of the game).

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I probably spent an hour trying to find out myself. Apparently the base game is called JETT: The Far Shore, and Given Time is an expansion. They're both 12 hours long each.

Far Shore is a very authored, story-focused experience, where you'll go from objective to objective, and have a lot of interactions with other characters. It's a rather laid back campaign, where you are not likely to face big challenges. Time seems to pass based on objectives (or it's so lenient that it feels like it).

Given Time is a more free-roaming experience - you'll travel alone and will face several challenges and puzzles, some of which will force you to master some of the movement mechanics. You will rarely talk to characters. No co-pilot commentary. Time passes real-time and some entities will only be active or will have different behaviours depending on daytime. You can easily skip to these times of day by sleeping in any shelter.

(I'd say the base game is a complete experience on its own, if anyone is wondering.)

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The steppe mysticism and religious aspects of the game were very fresh in a space travel sci-fi game. In some way, it reminded me of Pathologic, Vane and Outer Wilds. The music is often dreamy, the voice actors are wonderful and the singing is otherworldly. The game made me feel a sense of adventure, homesickness, belonging, duty, sorrow for loved ones, a wonder and awe over alien landscapes and creatures.

If you're able to put yourself past the negatives, can enjoy a slowburn game, and are willing to give your time to an unconventional, ever so slightly clunky game, this is for you, and is definitely worthwhile to play.

This review does not contain any spoilers.

I played the game completely blind, didnt know what the gameplay was like whatsoever, never watched the trailers or anything. If you can, try to play it blind too! Throughout, the game always kept throwing new stuff at me, new weapons, new mechanics, always new locations and enemies too! There are a couple of really great segments that took me completely by surprise and some triggered deep primal fears in me. Very few games do that, and that's super special to me.

At first, the UX in the UI was weird and something about how you move ingame made me a little dizzy and motion sick but I got used to it quickly.

Each weapon is satisfying to use with different windup speeds, timing, range and some of them have their own crosshair, making them very varied and there's some challenge in switching between them.

The level design is really tight, it's great how the game takes you out on these adventures and then it loops around to take you back to a familiar place. I found the bits of foreshadowing really nice in the environment, it made me excited to discover more. The environments were all very unique in looks, themes, enemies and music.

This is a very unique game with a mostly consistent quality throughout by a solo game dev from Norway who took a lot of inspiration from the culture, folklore and nature surrounding him, it's well worth checking out Slid Studio's youtube channel if you enjoyed playing the game for more behind the scenes stuff!

This review does not contain any spoilers.

Ctrl Alt Ego is a finely crafted immersive sim with a focus on creative problem-solving.

It's got sprawling levels with different paths - and just like levels, problems can also be approached in different ways. It's got a wide range of abilities to unlock that can open up new avenues to traverse and abuse the environment and its inhabitants. Sabotage or directly confront, turn robots against one another or sneak past everything unseen!

There are apparently also ways to bypass some of the main story missions, I know two ways exist to bypass one specific mission but I have not figured out how yet. For me, that's super exciting.

Story-wise it's not that unique, filled with some tired tropes, but it takes an interesting turn down the line. The voice acting is stellar (some of it voiced by the main dev himself, very impressive!)

Toss in a bucket-load of IT terminology and jokes, British humour and Doctor Who-esque designs and you've got yourself a slightly ugly but very charming game with a ton of S O V L and creativity.

I love that the keybindings are tailored for PC and themed according to the game, ie to go into "control mode" to select a robot to inhabit, you do it by pressing "CTRL" on your keyboard! Similarly, CTRL+Home makes you control your primary robot. The ability "Shift" is triggered by your "Shift" key. This is so so brilliant! (Of course you could play this with a gamepad but WHY WOULD YOU?!)

I almost finished the game, but I didn't like my build and choices I made so I restarted from scratch and really loved replaying it. I have never ever done this before, and I also never replay games, but this game was even more enjoyable the second time around, because understanding the design language of the game allowed me to notice opportunities I had not before, and abuse the mechanics to their full potential. My second time with the game has been phenomenal, and the last two levels really blew my mind (in my first run I quit just before them!)

This is one of the rarer games that use achievement descriptions as a way to pique player interest and encourage them to do unusual things, for example there is an achievement that suggests an alternate way of completing a mission objective, and another implies that there is a way to bypass a segment of a seemingly mandatory story segment.

If you like to be creative, like imsims, British humour, IT jokes, robots, sci-fi, Doctor Who, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or any combination thereof, this game is for you. Just don't forget to bring your smarts.

This review does not contain any spoilers.

👊 Let me just preface all this that you interact with EVERYTHING by punching! 👊

FIGHT KNIGHT is a super impressive game from a small developer with a strong art and sound direction, and a solid vision.

Each area of the game feature vastly differing themes, looks, music, puzzle mechanics and enemies with their own gimmicks. The difficulty curve is paced nicely, each area introducing new ways you have to tackle enemies, and making you combine tactics from the previous one.

The music outside of combat is comfortably droney, while the tracks during combat are so energetic that you will catch yourself head-bobbing to it while punching enemies into a pulp. The enemy designs are charming, their dialogues witty and funny.

Puzzles are a right amount of hard, overcoming them feels very rewarding. You will be randomly dragged into combat, but the game is better for it, it breaks up thinking about the puzzles, and sometimes steals you away for long enough time to have a fresh perspective on your next attempt at something you might be stuck on.

Combat feels very dynamic and satisfying; each area combines a variety of enemies, all requiring different tactics to defeat. There's equipment to unlock that change your playstyle entirely, each set's pieces scattered on each floor of the dungeons, and you will also be using potions and special attacks that complement these fighting styles.

The game's pacing is pretty much perfect for me, you unlock shortcuts and almost never have to backtrack, the levels feel the right length and boss fights are a satisfying cherry on top of the level they are after.

👊 Strong art direction
👊 Fantastic ambience
👊 Combat music that will make you PUMPED
👊 Several different areas with unique enemies, music and art
👊 Upgrades allow a good variety of playstyles
👊 Sometimes a bit difficult, but ultimately rewarding puzzles
👊 Super satisfying combat
👊 You interact with everything by PUNCHING!!!
👊 An emotional ending

What's not to like?!