Recent reviews by VikingSchism

Take city builders like Settlers or Anno and cross it with a worker placement board game and you get DotAGE. It's a great concept - allowing time to carefully consider what you're going to do with your turn, although sometimes all you're left with is bad choices trying to make the best of a losing situation. This is a game where a choice made 10 turns ago - like where to place a building - can and will come back to haunt you later down the road. Thus it's going to be one that takes a couple of games to really get a grasp of; to avoid making those mistakes that initially you won't realise are mistakes. I've barely scratched the surface of this game, but I feel like it'll be one I come back to quite a bit

A lot of fun when the servers aren't imploding from the sheer success of the game

WarriOrb looks like a very interesting game indeed. This prologue is a short taste of what is to come and does an excellent job of giving a sample of what can be expected from the full game.

You play as WarriOrb who is, as the name would imply, a ball-shaped warrior. There is an antagonistic force or being named Ruin who is seemingly destroying the world. This setup isn't the most unique, orb body aside, though there is definitely room for some interesting lore to be developed around many of the elements present.

You may be reminded of games such as Dark Souls, and Hollow Knight while playing - even setting aside the premise - and it is easy to see where these comparisons might come from. These comparisons are by no means derisive though, the game executes the style fairly well so far. There are paths which loop back around to themselves, secrets to find, and the combat feels moderately challenging. There are a couple of methods of attack: first is simply hitting with your axes (though it seems like there'll be other weapons to use in the full game); next is a special attack, which in this case involves throwing the axes for a ranged attack; finally you unlock the ability to cast spells later on, alongside two spells.

One of the unique selling points of the game is the ball body your character finds themselves in, and this does not disappoint. You are able to curl up into a ball and this allows you to bounce about which I found incredibly satisfying to make use of. Rolling around is simply fun, and I often found myself bouncing about to get places. This demo only teases at the potential challenges that this mode of platforming could present and I'd be interested to see how the developers further utilise this ability in the full game.

The music wasn't anything too amazing, but it did a good job at contributing to the atmosphere and was pleasant enough to listen to so I can't really fault it on that. The visuals were clean and looked nice - it may not be the most stunning game you'll ever see, but it isn't close to being an eyesore. Lighting was done well and helped to build up the atmosphere further.

Overall, this demo is absolutely worth your time to check out - it's short, free, fun, and did I mention it's free? All you stand to lose is about half an hour of time to see if this game might appeal to you. I'd say that's a pretty even exchange.

If you played Danganronpa 1 and 2 and want more Danganronpa, then this isn't a bad game by any means. Is the gameplay mediocre? Yes; the third person shooting is fairly dull, and probably the most enjoyable part for me was looking for all of the hidden collectibles. However, the story that is told here was compelling enough to see me through to the end within a couple of days of starting to play the game.

The general setup for the story involves Komaru Naegi (Makoto's sister) escaping from the apartment that she had been trapped in as a result of events described in the first game. As she escapes, she encounters Monokuma robots attacking the city, and is given a "hacking gun" which shoots truth bullets that can destroy the Monokuma robots. It is shortly revealed that the perpetrators of the attack are a group of children, calling themselves the Warriors of Hope. Komaru is dropped back into the city, where she encounters Toko ♥♥♥♥♥♥, and from there the two set out to escape the city. The story is still the main focus of the game here, and there are plenty of lengthy dialogue sequences. One nice addition to the game is that the vast majority of dialogue in this game is fully voiced - although some of the voice acting leaves a little to be desired. I did feel that the story restated a lot of already obvious things, often to its detriment (for example: character dialogue might imply certain things, but then they will restate it explicitly shortly after, no matter how clear the implication was). Overall though, the story is well done and has a wonderfully hateable main villain, whose manipulative and twisted nature is hard not to detest.

The music here is brilliant (as it has been in the previous Danganronpa games). I particularly like this game's rendition of Beautiful Death, which features some nice drums this time around. A couple of other iconic tracks from the previous games also return, although there does seem to be less music in general. The sound design overall is fine, it's not amazing, but it's functional.

Can I recommend this to anyone who hasn't played Danganronpa 1 and 2? No, not really, if you're not invested in the Danganronpa story, then there's not really much on offer here.

Cogmind is an excellent Roguelike, which plays differently to many other RLs. Part of this is the emphasis on ranged combat, in which you fire volleys of shots at enemy robots, another part of it is the lack of traditional levelling - instead allowing you to build up your bot from parts scrounged from around the level. The last run I attempted ended with me desperately dashing through 4 consecutive floors, trying my hardest to avoid engaging foes, and frantically searching for items and exits. I eventually succumbed to a swarm of foes on the final floor - but the experience was exhilerating. There were many moments where I wasn't sure that I'd make it, but managed to hang on by the skin of my teeth, and now that I have managed to get there once, I hope to be able to get there again and surpass my past attempt.
The developer of the game is also active in places such as the subreddit, and on discords (such as the Rogulikes Discord), which is always a positive.
This is a game that fans of Roguelikes would be insane to pass up on - it has fairly unique mechanics, good challenge, a communicative developer, and does not feel like an early access game; when buying this game you are buying a polished product that will be able to provide many hours of entertainment. If you haven't tried a Roguelike before, but anything here seems interesting, give it a shot - you almost definitely will not regret it.

I got this as a part of the Humble Monthly Bundle, and after playing briefly I have to say it has excellent aesthetic style, as well as a nice soundtrack to complement the gameplay

The game is chunked into level sets, and from what I can tell so far, each introduces a mechanic and teaches you that mechanic through the levels in that chunk, culminating in a boss of sorts, testing your ability.

This is a game where you learn by doing, being very minimalistic with text and instruction. It took me a while to realise that moving while shooting was slower, but once I realised this, I noticed I had improved. The game is very good at making the player improve

Yes

This game is terrible. It's one of the worst things I've played. The random generation of worlds is pointless and useless. What purpose does having a slightly different looking world each time have, when there's 0 incentive to explore it outside of "head to the next dungeon". Sure, you need to get ores and stuff to craft, but they're so ****ing pointless to try to find. At one point I needed to find 200 of an ore. It took me ages, and not one of those moments of gameplay was fun.

There are multiple classes, which is nice. However:
- You have to unlock them
- It's pretty much necessary to pay for them
- They are extremely limited, you only have 3 skills
- The skills aren't great
- Combat boils down to click while dodging like a madman, sometime pressing the ability keys

The game has construction (cuz blocks), but it's pretty unecessary to make anything decent:
- Your "cornerstone" (building plot) is so limited it's basically laughable
-- This leads to most people just building skyscrapers
- Block variety is terrible, pretty much being solid colour blocks
- The only reason it's necessary to have a cornerstone is for some crafting stations, so all you really need is a space for them
- Getting blocks is not engaging, you point and click at what blocks you want in build mode, essentially
- Crafting is boring, it's pretty much just get a lot of this resource and then click on the thing and you have it

The core gameplay loop is unengaging to the point of extreme boredom:
- You basically just go through short, boring, randomly placed dungeons each having a boss at the end
- The combat, as previously mentioned is unfun
- Loot doesn't really feel very rewarding as there doesn't seem to be an escalation in aesthetics. You'll be getting stuff that looks good all the time, rather than starting off with basic stuff and progresssing to high tier gear.
- The rarity system seems slightly too skewed
-- If you find an item of a higher rarity it'll almost always be better than one of a low rarity (meaning that as you progress through the game, each rarity becomes increasingly obsolete

The aesthetics of the game are also very poor:
- The voxel style graphics seem way too overdone
- They don't look great (in my subjective opinion)
- The music is completely **** with nothing memorable about it
- There seems to be barely any stylistic consistency
-- The items are mostly community designed, and no thought seems to have been given to the consistency of items

This leads into my next point, about story:
- There's none
- No, seriously
- Not even a basic context plotline, like any game should have

Quests?
- Don't even bother

Pay 2 Win?
- Yup

Devs listening to community's fairly negative reaction recently?
- Look at the amount of negative reviews that have been rated "Most Helpful"

Anything good about the game?
+ It was fun for the first hour

I am walking along the corridor at school. Talking to a friend. I suddenly stop, the realisation dawns on me.
I have to resist the urge to shout "MOV LEFT, NIL. THAT'S IT!" but I manage it. As soon as possible I note down the idea I had. Then I'm eagerly waiting to get home in order to test this solution, and as soon as I do I boot up my nice gaming rig, just to go on a game to emulate an old machine. I instantly add this new solution to the puzzle, and test.

"IT WORKS!" I exclaim. On to puzzle 6.

*Looks at how many more there are.* It's going to take a while.

SO HARD. BUT FUN