Recent reviews by blue

be wary that "steam deck playable" is not 100% true, i had to jump through some hoops to find the right compatibility settings

other than that i think it is better than civ 6, less micro involved but decisions still feel impactful

fun little mix of idler and incremental, decent price tag to accompany it. sure, why not?

A fun little city builder. Let's be honest : if you played a city builder before, you have played most of them - you build to grow your city in order to get more buildings in order to grow your city.

Steamworld build knows what it wants to be (mostly, more on that in a bit) and adheres to recurring standards in the genres : citizen tiers that feed into certain needs of production in order to grow and get upper tiers of citizenry, all while meeting the needs of everyone in the city.

Where the game diverges (this is the "more in a bit" part) is adding a layer in the form of a "mining layer" : at large, still city builderesque, albeit with less buildings and a bit of defense. Relatively simple, fairly inoffensive, a fun extra little layer to consider when building your city.

The endgoal? You aren't here to grow forever : you have to build a rocket and leave the planet. Grow your city, expand your mine, acquire rocket parts and leave. Sounds good? Pick it up. A bit hesitant because of the price? Wait for a sale. Want something where you have infinite freedom to do what you want? If you aren't looking for something that is "linear", go seek a sandbox.

As it stands, as a huge steamworld fan, this game is fun, being more laidback in the same universe and allowing me to enjoy the vibe as I build my little city. I think it's great for what it is.

patapon, for me, is a game about counting 5-6-7-8 over and over because i have no sense of rhythm, and i wish there was a steam tag for "counting" or "numbers" or something. but other than that it's pretty good

a decently paced puzzle game with a chill soundtrack to accompany it.

the game looks good - the voxels accompany well the chill atmosphere of the game but you can tell a decent amount of thought went into making buildings not look bad.

if you go only through what constitutes the "campaign", you are served several worlds with their own custom goals each, that range from saving money as much as possible while building a track or simply clicking things located on the level. on top of that, each level has a goal that asks you to spend as little money as possible. there's a decent amount to sink your teeth into.

on top of that, there's a level generator to play at your leisure, as well as a level creator.

my only big complaint is that for the kind of game this is, it does not run too well on the steam deck - performance becomes better when you lower the settings but it really feels like at no point it should make the device chug this much.

i would say it's not a "conventional" puzzle game, considering the genre usually does not float my boat yet i bothered to pick up (and play!) station to station. i think it is worth your time!

tobyfox was right. imperial china is my favorite chapter.

a solid twin-stick scoring arcade type shooter. really not much to say : what you see is what you get, solid gameplay loop and a decent difficulty curve. worth your time!

adds a whole other island to the game, and the difficulty builds off isle 3/casino. i do think sometimes the screen gets a tad too crowded on these new encounters so it makes learning them a bit harder, but once you learn them they are fairly in-line with the rest of the game.

you also get to play as ms chalice, who plays differently enough from the two boys from the base game that it warrants trying her out in the rest of the game to see how you can tackle the old bosses. if you get cuphead you might as well get the dlc, it's more than worth it!

i will be upfront about this : i am not an atari fan. because of its steep price, the only reason i even got my hands on this was because it got bundled with the recharged titles in a humble bundle offering a while back. i think that most atari offerings are not good, even for the time period they came for, and time has not been kind to them.

now, with that said however : i do think this is a decent offering overall. digital eclipse is good at what they do, the selection of games is good and includes jaguar and lynx titles, as well as brand new games (!) made by digital eclipse. i am not the most picky person when it comes to quality emulation, so i couldn't tell you if this meets high standards, but i didn't notice any major hitches.

so, is this worth your money? it depends on if you want to pay for a curated experience of the Atari legacy. i don't like saying "paying for an experience" when it comes to games, because i think "fun" is the most important argument, but i think it's what describes this collection best. for most people i would recommend on sale, but this is a decent interactive museum.

a solid time. does not waste your time for re-attempting bosses, controls are tight, art is fantastic and music is great. pacing is also solid and i would say the only thing that really brings the game down ever so slightly is the penultimate boss gauntlet that goes on a little bit too long to clear / reattempt.