Recent reviews by QETC

There's no real easy way to say this, but there is just something special about this game. It is not a game for the average gamer, or even the average roguelike gamer and it certainly doesn't try to be a game for them. It came seemingly from nowhere with strong independent grassroots that it still holds true to. For those of you who understand what the game is about, who get the hype, though, there are many other like minded people who also see the vast potential of spending hundreds of hours in the game and enjoying every second of it, like I do.

Although this is a small, relatively unpopular single player game, there is quite a tight knit community for it on the steam forums. I mostly do not read through the community; I mostly appreciate and recognize the continuous updates to the gameplay so I have usually read through the patch notes and developer blogs and from reading those I have seen that various community members have contributed ideas for content of the game over the many years it has been released on Steam, and those ideas actually became a part of the game in one way or another. The community cares for the game and the developer cares enough to respond to the community and constantly improve what he can. All of these updates have been free, and 5 (five) dollars is a bargain for the amount of time you can spend on completing all of the challenges of the game.

Simply put, the game is a roguelike set in hyperbolic space where your main objective to "win" the game is to collect 10 treasures of 9 different treasure types in as many different lands and to then find an orb of yendor and its far away matching key in order to unlock the orb. Roguelikes are generally meant to be hard, and while HyperRogue is in someways a hard game; this main objective of the game is relatively simple and easy to accomplish once you know how exactly you can accomplish that. I won't spoil how exactly this can be accomplished, but it does illustrate just how easy it is to lose your path from the one point to another in the hyperbolic world of the game. In the earlier versions of the game, the game was quite simple, but the updates to the game have introduced some interesting mechanics and more. While this main task of the game is relatively simple and doesn't involve constant difficult combat, players of the game can find further challenges in the varying different side quests of the game or collect record amounts of treasure in each land; generally the main goal for me as an achievement hunter is 50 treasures since that is the largest amount of treasure that grants an achievement for the land. There are many differing game modes and options you can use to keep the game interesting. Going for these challenges can take many attempts or it can take a single attempt depending on your knowledge of the game and the difficulty of the land.

Unlike many other roguelikes, the combat itself doesn't involve rng and is not particularly complex; generally speaking you can kill enemies in one hit and in the main game mode there aren't large amounts of items to collect that give you tangible, permanent benefits or skills for you to level up for your character. There is rng in the sense of where enemies spawn and the land is generated outside of your current view of the world, but you can mitigate these variables by carefully considering what you can see. You can generally think about it as a game of chess in a hyperbolic world where there are discrete rules and patterns for you and the AI to follow and you can take your time and carefully consider the part of the world you can see and the parts of the world that you cannot see or you can just run and hope for the best. If you do take the time to think several steps ahead, like higher level chess players do, you can see your doom well in advance.

Every time I die, and I have died many times, I feel that is almost entirely my fault, and so I do not blame the game, but think of where I went wrong and where I can do better the next time I go for a challenging goal. In that sense, the game feels quite fair to me although there are a few lands or challenging puzzles that I still don't quite understand enough to master despite several attempts at them. Some of the concepts for even the base game can be confusing for new players, but there are just the right amount of resources available for learning how to play. For the majority of the game and its challenges, you can learn how to play using the in game tools and tooltips and I frequently use those as a quick reminder for when I haven't played the game in a while. While the math behind the game can be complex to most people (including myself), the general gameplay is not so complex as to require an extensive wikipedia site like some other roguelike game. For those few things that you cannot learn from the in game help, there is an extensive community source guide on steam that contains everything you need to know

For all of the infinite possibilities from the community based updates and infinite worlds and land generation of the game, there is something finite about HyperRogue. Although there is a seemingly infinite amount of land that can be represented in the game and each of these individual lands that make up that space can be completed in a sense; no one single player has yet proven themselves to be the master of all of these lands and achieved Total Victory, to prove that they truly are the hyperest rogue with complete mastery over the game and 100% achievements (in the latest version). Will you be the hyperest rogue?

Although it is hard to get into in a way from the sheer information you have to know, none of the difficulty in the game involves having to learn a deep crafting system(there is one in the embers of rage expansion, but its really simple, and completely optional for most classes), having to grind, or having to get amazing rng drops (at least on the reasonable difficulty levels). Even then players that are bad/new at roguelikes can just change the difficulty level/the amount of lives they get to enjoy the game without fear of losing progress. For those who are new to the game, there is a helpful community along with in game chat rooms that can assist you. For people that are looking for something different, there is an extensive modding community for quality of life mods, class additions etc; and some of these even get integrated into the main game.

With or without the difficulty, you will still get the gripping gameplay of a roguelike (although it is of course better if you have a chance of dying). Additionally, there are many unique classes in the game so that you can find a playstyle that suits you.

Overall, I believe it is the best roguelike of all time, because it keeps the good things about roguelikes and avoids most of the annoying things about them.

This game is a first person adventure game, a true adventure game where your focus is on wandering environments and solving puzzles along a storyline, not like the ‘adventure’ classification some games like the Legend of Zelda are sometimes given.

The game is set in a cyberworld/server where people that die have their memories preserved so that their loved ones can ‘visit’ them when they are gone. During the game you get the idea that things like the cyberworld weren’t common, so the memories you visit are relatively normal, like current 21st century experiences people might have as opposed to experiences in the transitioning cyberpunkesque world that the cyberworld exists in. However, the visuals in the game are just what you would expect from a game in the cyberpunk genre when not in the isolated memories. The visuals are relatively simple looking as far as being like crysis, but the style is appropriate for it and works well with the game. The sound in the game is pretty decent, but one of the added things that some may love or hate is that you constantly hear soft shouting or other horror tropes to give off a horror game atmosphere, even when you aren’t being chased by enemies or dangers that should actually give such a feeling.

In the beginning you are stuck in a town of 'memories' in the cyberworld where you must experience groupings of memories ranging from school to childhood, although you start at childhood, so it reminded me like it was a reversal of the initial memories you go through in To the Moon, although you can choose to complete the memories in each grouped set out of order. As I said before, in each of these memories you must experience, you must find hidden objects and use them, solve puzzles, and avoid possible death as there are sometimes enemies that will confront you. Hidden in each of these memories are blue ducks that will give you some memorable info that adds to the game such as pictures of people the main character knew. I usually don’t collect unnecessary objects, but collecting these really adds to the story and narrative of the game, so gotta catchem all. Every time you complete a memory, you go to a post memory sequence which is usually somewhat unrelated to the memory where you have to solve a puzzle and/or do something under a time limit. Most of the puzzles aren’t too hard, but sometimes it won’t be obvious what to do.

Overall, I found Master Reboot to be a fun game, and if nothing else, its probably one of the few games on steam with the Welsh language option.

Dredd vs Death is a short, dystopian fps where you go through the levels helping the citizens of mega city one until inevitablly you are sent somewhere else to help people and fight punks, cultists and undead until you eventually learn that 4 boss characters have escaped from prison and then you help the people where the boss characters went and beat the bosses, until you beat the final one, Death.

The fps gameplay is mostly standard, you get to have 2 weapons maximum and you have to keep the pistol that all judges use. The judge pistol has several ammunition options such as explosive. flammble. and ricocheting options, but I found that they werent particularly useful or even detrimental; lighting people on fire didnt seem to do much damage and if they run towards you then you risk being burned. The high explosive mode doesn't have a huge radius for hitting enemies and most of the time its not worth the time required to change ammo from the normal ammunition. Additionally, on some levels you don’t get much of a refill on the judge pistol and usually have to rely on using an alternate weapon and these alternate pistol modes use your limited ammo faster. There is also some unneeded fluff such as a reputation system where reputation increases when you arrest people and help citizens not get killed and decreases when you attack friendly targets and people who have already surrendered to be arrested; but this only matters for ratings unless you have the lowest reputation by killing friendlies, then the game will cause a mission failure. At some times there were bugs such as me sniping off some enemies that were set to be killed by a script and that caused a mission failure. Something that can get annoying at times is that its not clear where your next objective is, but the gameplay is fairly passable fps gameplay once you get past the bugs.

The music in the game wasn't particularly memorable to me, but the dystopian setting and various advertisements for dubious fictional future products added to the atmosphere of the game. Given the short length and dated graphics in this game, I wouldn’t go out of my way to pick this up, but it was in a bundle and I got my copy from trading so I figured why not. Unless you really love the Dredd universe no matter the implementation, there are better games for your money.

At first glance, the appeal of this game comes from the contrasting colors of its tron inspired graphic style, although it is not a graphically intensive game. The graphic style works well given the story of the game and some tidbits like animations for dying, respawning, and starting a level. Something that was bugging me about the game, however, is that after doing some searching online the developers of the game stated that the game was locked at 30 fps. I'm not playing on a potato here. The sound is appropriate to the visual style of the game and changes to accent certain in game events, but it can get repetitive.

As for the gameplay of this game, you wander around some twenty odd levels as either a tank or a soldier on foot. As a foot soldier you don’t have weapons and can only run around and use a shield and its gameplay consists of either exploring around structures that are too cramped for a tank or running across a battlefield and using your shield to protect you. As a tank, you go around the map completing objectives such as traveling to advance the story, escorting units, or base defense/offense where you have to build up your base and capture the enemy key/flag while keeping your own safe. During the base missions, you don’t have to micro manage units or building anything, all you usually need to do is bring a resource to the base to make it begin construction and mark resources for harvesting and the computer will automatically build things. You also have only one primary weapon, the tank’s cannon which can be charged for more area of effect and damage, but charge resets if you are damaged. You also need to collect shards from killed enemies to use powerups such as sprinting or firing rockets or summoning units. Once you have enough shards you can use any power that you have unlocked according to its cost. To unlock these power ups and upgrade them, certain tasks will give you points to upgrade them as will finishing levels and you have to go to an upgrade station as a tank. Some power ups can be used with only a few shards and others are very powerful, but you need to save the shards; but I personally preferred to use them on sprinting most of the time.

Many of the levels give you the idea that the world is huge and as such, you are incredibly slow without sprinting, but your sprinting is limited by these shards which only drop upon killing enemies. This problem is compounded by the game’s respawn locations and lack of a save system. If you die on some levels, you could be ages away from the next objective, but at least you will respawn with some shards to spring back, if only for a little while. As for the lack of a save system, you must complete a level in full or your progress will not be saved, so make sure that if you play this game that you can commit some time into finishing a level or just idle on it. If it weren’t for the slow pace of the game compounded with sometimes terrible respawning locations, the game would be more enjoyable, but it is still worth playing it to play something that is a different genre.

I don't know why people haven't tagged it this way, but its obvious that this game is a roguelite behind the messages and themes that it contains. Jason Oda covers the whole story aspect pretty well in the about section of the store page, so I will focus my review on the game beneath the facade.

The game mentions that you take on 6 out of 11 levels each playthrough, but these 11 levels appear to be split into two different types where there arent any major differences other than the graphics/map layout for levels of the same type. The first type being a tag/hide and seek with npcs and the second, more frequent kind, is an open town where you talk with the npcs and try to gather keys,resources, and information. This repetition would be boring if it wasn't for the short minigames in between.

There are at least 5 different types of minigames ranging from platforming to Galaga to zelda dungeons and these different types can come in varying difficulties. If you succeed at the minigames, there is much to gain, especially if you play them perfectly, but they can also be rather dangerous

First off of the roguelite checklist, randomness. Random characters, random levels, random npcs, random minigames, randumb... The first two don't really make a difference, but the random npcs are what make the game. You'll have to get clues and keys from these npcs, but not all are to be trusted. The npcs never seem to lie about information, so aside from getting some nonsense one liner that wastes your time talking to the npc, the worst they will do is sell you a trapped room. However, since you can get free, safe rooms from the rounds, the npcs really are the least of your problems. The information from the npcs will make otherwise random choices definite, but if you are really desperate for time or resources you can guess questions, although you don't really need to do that to beat the game.

The worst of all randomness is the lightning. The first kind of lightning is used to pave the way to an exit, but there are several exits and its possible that your lightning will hit an empty space, so it is easy for the lighting to be spread out and still not have an exit. These rolls will make or break your runs, they are the difference between having to focus all of your resources just to make it to the next level and being able to safely farm resources with impunity. Then there is the matter of having to find shelter in the storms. The randomness here has the potential to be more punishing when you have few buildings. Some buildings can take 1 or 2 lightning bolts and still stand for the next storm, but too few buildings and these tankier buildings are likelier to be destroyed. Despite all of the possible ways you can get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ by the dice, you do have a decent bit of leeway to messup. Even if you get a few bad dice rolls, you should be able to make those up with resources from playing the minigames well.

Then there is the matter of death. You can use your various resources to get second chances once you 'die', but when you run out of those, you must start from the beginning. Additionally, the penalty when using buildings to revive gets increasingly severe, while using money to revive, while a static cost, will prevent you from getting more buildings/lightning.

What do you get for replaying this game? Mostly you just get to see different specs of story/dialogue; however, actually seeking out the in game diaries will be detrimental to progressing to the end, but I suppose that's just part of the message with this kind of game. You'll see the different level art styles and see some different minigames, but thats about it. Some roguelites require you to play the game over and over to get direct benefits or crucial knowledge, but any useful knowledge is rerolled with each new game aside from knowing how to play a specific minigame.

In the end, its not close to being the hardest game of the genre since you dont need a truly perfect run to beat the game, but it isn't too simple either. Players have the option of playing the way the developer would, but you could also speedrun it too if you wanted to. I recommend both playing to win and playing to explore in order to get the most out of this game. Finally, for your own sanity, do not play this game in full screen mode unless you want to make it even harder, perhaps impossible.

30 fps lock top lel

dunno teecee

jon st john, enough said

Its quake, nuff said