Recent reviews by A Pocketful of Stars

+ Beautiful graphics
+ Unique puzzle concept
- Annoying controls
- Shallow writing
- Glitches, including one that cut off the final line in each chapter so I couldn't see or hear what was said to conclude them

This one's not for me. Which is an awful shame, because I love the team's later work, Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. (I suppose the glass-half-full view is that this game being worse means that they improved along the way).

Assemble with Care offers you a fun, unique puzzle concept, tinkering with beautiful retro items to repair them. But while there is some satisfaction to be had snapping things into place and deconstructing the things you're given, to really make this work the game would have had to have a good, tactile feeling of satisfaction to its tinkering, and it just doesn't.

The controls are frustrating, to the point that my reaction when I started fiddling with the first item to be fixed was a disbelieving, "Oh, no." Pieces you click on snap in and out of place instantly, which means you frequently accidentally pull out a part you just placed while trying to do something else. Objects also snap into the middle of the screen for you to manoeuvre them and back onto their designated spot on the worktable with one click, which activates far too easily. The overall effect is a bit like attempting to pick up a bunch of magnets that keep stubbornly sticking themselves back down to the table whenever you fumble. Rotating things, as you'll have to in order to take them apart, is yet again needlessly frustrating—the clicking and dragging works eventually, but not without a great deal of unfun fiddling, right before it snaps itself back down to the table anyways.

In fact, the controls comprise the majority of difficulty in each level. The puzzles themselves offer almost no challenge. They would probably be satisfying and relaxing to complete if it weren't for the actual experience of trying to move things around being so unpleasant. At 14 levels with one puzzle each, the game just a short enough commitment that I managed to finish all of them, although the fact that I might have quit if it were any longer isn't exactly a point in the game's favour.

If you were hoping the story that ties everything would make up for all this, I'm afraid it's actually the least enjoyable part. It's weightless and "wholesome" to the point that its characters solving their problems (via the random objects you fix, of course) feels unearned, especially since you barely get any time with any of them. You can tell the team was trying hard to fit the two different parts of the game together, and the moment-to-moment writing isn't bad, but honestly, I think they would have been better served just creating a pure fix-it puzzle game without the framing device.

TL;DR: I can imagine people with a bit more patience than me enjoying the unique puzzles in spite of the sloppy controls. I don't recommend it, but it's middling rather than terrible, and if you think the aesthetic and concept would make up for the controls, lacklustre story and short runtime for you, you may still want to give it a shot. Otherwise, pass.

+ This short story packs a real narrative punch.
+ Cool graphics, with a deliberate scribbly style to ape the main character drawing in her journal
+ Fantastic soundtrack

- No way to "scroll back" if you've missed something by accident
- The erasure/drawing mechanic is unique and adds flair, but sometimes it felt like I was fighting the controls or it moved on before I was finished reading. You can auto-erase by pressing F, but it's not always available.

A gentle, sometimes painful story about queerness and family—both the one you're born into and the one you find for yourself. There are two dual narratives, one about Kasio, a trans girl returning home for the first time in a while uncertain of what she'll be doing next, and one about Cassiopeia, an astronaut(?) from another planet(?) trying to save the universe from a black hole(???).

As you can probably tell, I didn't quite follow the second narrative line, and I'm still not totally sure how it ties in to the other one or how much of it is a metaphor, or meant to be Kasio's imagination. I didn't need to understand that part to have an amazing time with the main storyline, however.

If Found remains cozy throughout, despite sometimes being heartbreakingly bittersweet. It's about surviving past when your life and relationships fall apart, finding love and community in the people around you even when you can't love yourself. The characters are lovable, the atmosphere is on point, and the only reason the story isn't the best I've read lately is because I just came from the also-excellent Citizen Sleeper. If you love narrative-driven games and don't mind having limited opportunities to make choices, nothing should stop you from picking this up immediately.

This DLC doesn't give you either a new collection room at the research institute or any quests related to the isopods, so it does end up feeling a bit tacked on.

Still, more bugs means more variety during your playtime, so it's hard to argue with that, especially at such a reasonable price.

+ The graphics are cute
+ There does seem to be a fairly impressive amount of branching depending on your choices
+ The "brainwashing" video clips that play between days are cool and by far the best part of the game.

- Clumsy story writing
- Decent match-3 gameplay isn't enough to stay engaged

All right, that's enough of that.

Day Repeat Day sets out to simulate how boring it is to work at a company where your job is essentially meaningless, and largely succeeds on that front. Your "work," in this case, is completing match-3 games that allegedly result in shipping items out to different companies. Or are possibly part of some brainwashing conspiracy tech. The match-3 games themselves are a nice enough distraction, but they're just challenging enough (and randomized enough) that you can't totally relax into completing them, largely due to a limited turn count that makes you restart if you fail. On the other hand, they also aren't challenging enough to actually engage your brain much. On its own, the gameplay isn't enough to prop the game up, and sadly the writing doesn't fare much better.

During your work day, you're given the chance to chat with a few other characters in your IMs, who are universally two-dimensional and unnuanced. The game's set up so you can often make important choices to shift the course of the narrative during these chats, yet I was frequently presented with choices that were nothing like what I actually wanted to say or do. Often I found myself picking between dialogue options that amounted to "be a jerk or act like a normal functioning adult." At other times all of the dialogue options provided essentially said the same thing, even if what they stated was the exact opposite of what I thought or didn't match my character's behaviour at all up to that point.

Aside from the IM conversations being tin-eared in general, the game's main problem is that class exploitation, as well as the ways in which it intersects with other political categories like race, disability and gender—an aspect which Day Repeat Day seems blissfully unaware of—is one of the most popular themes out there for stories. You need to have something new and interesting to say if you're going to tread over the same ground, or at least put a skilled twist on how you present it. Day Repeat Day's engages with anti-capitalism not like it understands it, but like it's parroting other people who do. The characters rant about AI replacing human workers, how evil the ultra-rich are and how draining the typical workday is—all of which is true, but none of which is explored in a way that contributed anything to my understanding. The story had all the subtlety of a thrown brick and none of the rebellious proletariat pizazz.

I can name dozens of games that do it better. Night in the Woods and Kentucky Route Zero hold up an uncomfortable mirror to small-town economic impoverishment while tying in dozens of intimate human stories. You Are Jeff Bezos is a better parody of billionaires and a better deconstruction of why their excessive level of wealth is morally indefensible. Papers Please is an excellent look at how complicity breeds in a broken system, Little Inferno is a scathingly entertaining satire of consumerism, and The Sea Will Claim Everything is such a charming, brilliantly erudite socialist screed that it's successfully converted some of my friends to its politics. Day Repeat Day's milquetoast writing just isn't up to snuff, and I don't care enough about any of its characters to keep pushing my way through the tedium.

TL;DR: I was shocked by how dull I found this, given it got a strong recommendation on Buried Treasure and from many others. But mildly entertaining match-3 gameplay isn't enough to justify trudging through a story this ham-fisted.

+ Adorable animations
+ Charming sense of humour

- Action sequences loop if you fail to give you another chance to complete them, which sometimes includes being forced to watch an entire (short) animated cutscene over and over

Short and sweet. This is a fairly typical puzzle point-and-click, but with wonderfully charming cartoon animations and an equally charming plot that wraps itself up neatly by the end. There are a handful of action sequences that require you to respond to an event, such as choosing the correct key from your inventory to lock a door before someone bursts through it, but they're not particularly challenging to complete.

On another note, I've no idea whatsoever why this is tagged as horror. Your blobby, perpetually-scowling protagonist is occasionally swallowed whole one of the monsters you encounter, or sometimes an imp gets thrown off a balcony or tower, but it's all lighthearted cartoon violence that would only scare a kindergartener. It would be perfect to give to a young child to play, or to play together with one, as some of the puzzles can be a bit obtuse and might require some help. (That said, the puzzles do largely make sense and don't require too much point-and-click moon logic.)

Recommended for anyone in the mood for a brief and warmly humorous adventure, or for something family-friendly that's still well-made and engaging.

+ Beautiful pixel art
+ Likeable characters
+ All puzzles and dialogue scenes are individually skippable
+ Good OST

- Ending doesn't quite pull together its ideas and themes

A pleasant puzzle game balanced with a good story that ask for too much of your time. The mysteries presented aren't cliché ones you're likely to instantly predict the solutions to, which is rare enough in and of itself. Some scenes drag on a little more than they need to, and one or two lines don't land like they should, but the characters, their relationships and their interactions are enjoyable. Their personalities hold little of the forced zaniness so often present in video game writing, especially ones borrowing an anime aesthetic. Overall, the story's been given far more attention than the average puzzle game where the plot is more of an excuse to progress than an actual story.

The presentation's generally on point as well, as you can tell from the trailer. I especially loved the fluid animation and sleek designs of the characters. There's only one thing I'd bring up to the devs to do better: Vincent stands out as the only non-white character in the main cast. I was delighted when it was revealed that he was Evan. You almost never see a Black guy in a hoodie cast as the charismatic genius. So it was doubly disappointing when a later twist revealed that the real genius behind the company was...a blond guy. I doubt any of this occurred to whoever designed the characters, but if you want to treat races as more than an aesthetic you need to pay attention to that kind of thing.

The puzzles themselves are also great! I don't tend to have the patience for puzzlers that require you to meticulously plan out every move before interacting with them. Evan's Remains is the perfect balance of intuitive fiddling and "ah-ha!" moments. Another nice twist is that the puzzles don't have a difficulty curve—an easy puzzle might be followed by a much harder one, or vice versa, which keeps things relaxing with lots of breaks. It might be on the easy side if you are the type to want 50-step puzzles with mind-melting solutions, though.

TL;DR: a brief puzzler with fun, relatively easy puzzles and a likeable cast and some entertaining mysteries to unravel, as long as you don't mind an ending that leaves a few plotholes lying around.

+ Sparsely-used soundtrack is excellent
+ Animations and behaviours for the animals are well done
+ Relaxing gameplay that still gives you enough things to do
+ You can get all the achievements just by progressing through the story and photographing all the animals—the sidequests are purely optional

- Some animals can only be found through plot events, which makes it hard to tell when you should keep looking and when you should just move on to the next day.
- Common glitch where you can get stuck in objects/under the floor, but there's an easy option in settings to fix it
- No way to move once you pull your phone up for a photo, so you better hope you aimed well

I was worried at first that this would be one of those games that's just cute and wholesome, and doesn't have much in the way of fun gameplay to offer. Happily, Alba gives you lots to do during her stay on the island. There are plenty of small sidequests to complete, like repairing the signs around the island using the photos you take or picking up rubbish. Almost any task you complete goes towards gathering signatures for your petition to preserve the nature reserve, and there are more of them to go around than you need to actually complete the game, so there's little to no pressure to obsessively try to get everything done.

The main mechanic is combing through the island to take photos of animals to add to your collection. Even with the simplistic cel-shaded models, the animators clearly put thought into how to make each of the animals that populate the island instantly recognizable. While it isn't outrageously in-depth, their behaviour and the design of their ecosystems were clearly programmed by someone who cared about these animals and wanted each of them to feel alive when you tried to take photos. At one point I tried to scan a "new" bird and was delighted to realize it was just a baby version of the others around it. At another, I recognized the peregrine falcon I'd been hunting for at a great distance because I saw its distinctive divebomb for prey.

There's something charming about many of the animals being fairly plain, everyday creatures too, rather than the game trying to wow you with exoticism. You'll find four types of gulls, "feral" pigeons, a variety of rabbits and hares, and plenty of other creatures you may have passed without thinking if you live in North America or parts of Europe. I appreciated how the game treated every one of them like it was something special to observe.

The people on the island are warm and personable, and I got attached to them quickly. Some of them have a humorous gimmick (like the boy with the perpetually scowling face who's always passionately yelling about something), but in general the game takes a down-to-earth approach with their personalities, which is nice. You can often tell that the adults are humouring Alba, and the simple yes/no dialogue options (which you control by making Alba nod or shake her head) allow for a bit of additional fun. Since the whole game takes place over less than a week, you'll spot the characters in different places each day and sometimes throughout a day, and many have a fair bit of dialogue they cycle through each time you speak to them that will adapt to acknowledge the things you've been doing around the island, which all contributes to that lovely feeling that the island is a living place. Alba herself features some adorable animations to endear her to you. Make her dash for long enough and she'll begin to skip; take her out on a narrow ledge or have her run down a hill and she'll hold her arms out to the side, airplane-style.

Story-wise you'll need to suspend your disbelief, especially when it comes to how easy it is to fix the island's problems. You can heal animals with just a touch of your first aid kid; the newspaper magically and immediately releases stories reporting on every new accomplishment of yours; fifty signatures on a petition is enough to stop a hotel from being built. But it is a video game, after all, and a casual one at that. There are worse things than a story that encourages kids to believe they can make a difference.

TL;DR: A fun, casual romp with a lot of heart and polish. This would be an excellent game for a kid, but even as an adult I enjoyed my time on Alba's island.

+ The gameplay adds layers as you go up each level and keeps things fresh by changing it up
+ Some special challenges are fun

- Too many conflicting obstacles and objectives make later levels frustrating
- The number of turns given for completion/time limits consistently runs stressfully short
- The menus have a weird scrolling interfaces because it's a mobile port
- The dictionary is missing random words

Words according to this game's dictionary: Ess, Dee, gaes, chang, rased, bos, sorb, mog, zoa, kir, mim, perea, noo

Not a word: Asians

Welcome to Highrise Heroes, a game about trying to guide a bunch of little character avatars down to the bottom of the screen by linking together words to make the letter tiles in their way disappear. Except your characters need to be regularly linked to oxygen tiles or they suffocate. Also there are metal blocks in the way. Also there are bombs. And a turn limit. And everything is on fire.

This game is not a relaxing, casual word game. The first few levels set you up for success and fun, but by Level 4 or so you'll be consistently needing to reset your game after just barely not managing to do whatever it is the game is asking of you.

You may chuckle to yourself that you, a veritable Boggle champion, will have no issues finishing the game. You're great at finding long, elegant words on the board! To which I'd have to point out that you're never allowed to just make whatever words you see in this game. I lost plenty of games where I laid down whoppers like QUEERER or TREATISE. There's always a turn limitation, and even if you see a long, juicy word, you're discouraged from just going for it unless it's helping you manage all the many, many fiddly things each level asks you to keep track of. Every move needs to be considered, and if you're like me, that takes some of the fun out of the actual word-spotting.

One of my least favourite gimmicks were the "bomb" letters that randomly generate across the board. They need to be disposed of within a certain number of turns, or else game over. The game can and will throw more bombs at you than you can dispose of in time unless you use multiple bomb letters in a single word, and yes, this does use up your limited number of turns while the characters also languish from lack of oxygen and whatever else is going on in that level.

As an example of how annoying this becomes, there are levels where you need to use specific golden tiles in your word, of which there are only 1-4. Bombs will show up there, too, in places completely inaccessible to your gold tiles, upon which your only choice is to then sigh and hit that retry button. And that's just two of the mechanics that get introduced.

Even the word-finding itself is hampered by an incredibly weird dictionary that will recognize words so rare they're essentially random combinations of vowels, but not commonplace ones like DOX or PHO. Often I chained random things together to see if they'd work, which sort of defeats the purpose of a word game in the first place.

Each level has clearly been thoughtfully designed with specific challenges in mind, so it's a shame that the game will sometimes simply present you with an unwinnable version of them. It's entirely up to the RNG gods which letters they feel like giving you, and overall I found the sheer number of things you have to try to micromanage each level more frustrating than fun. There was nothing worse than narrowly shooing the last of my vulnerable little character tiles through the bottom of the screen to safety, with just one turn left, having finally managed to break down the rock blocks in my way and controlled the fire and distributed oxygen properly and navigated the conveyor belts—only for the game to tell me I failed anyways because I was under the required number of points to proceed. Agony.

Theoretically, your characters provide superpowers you can use to help complete the levels more easily, but while you are forced to rely on them at times, they drain your number of remaining turns, so you're discouraged from actually using them. There were some powers I never even touched. You're also limited by whichever characters you have on that specific level, since they each have a different ability and will frequently separate from each other as the plot demands. It would have been way better to have a separate mechanic for powers. Perhaps a meter that gets charged up if you make words of a certain length, or even just a set number you can use each level.

One final word about the game's story, since it's received praise in other reviews: it's somewhat more detailed than the usual for a puzzle-y mobile adaptation like this, but it's really nothing to write home about. It was a pleasant way to give each of the little character tiles meaning during the gameplay, but the dialogue and writing are juvenile, and the one twist is broadcast so blatantly it would be almost impossible to miss it. So if you were considering buying it for the story but you aren't sure about the gameplay, give it a pass.

TL;DR: While there are some fun ideas packed in here, the game is unnecessarily hard, with no accessibility options and a mediocre story. I almost had fun with it, so if you're looking for a challenge rather than relaxation and don't mind having to restart the same level repeatedly, this might still be for you.

Personally, it made me crave a normal game of Boggle.

It never stops being satisfying to beat up a bunch of slave owners and free people. The translation is clumsy, and quite a few mechanics aren't sufficiently explained (how does Banzo work? How much defence do I need to repel the average attack on the quilombo?), but once you manage to get enough people in your community to turn things around it's smooth sailing to the finish line. Overall the game is quite rough around the edges, but worth the price for the cool setting and gameplay that's entertaining for its short runtime.

I've been curious about Sokpop's tiny games, which are funded through Patreon and released once a month. This is a great entry point to their work, a bite-sized time-travel puzzle adventure which as others have pointed out plays similarly to Majora's Mask. You're encouraged to pay attention to the routines of all the adorable little animal residents on a small island and use your observations to avert a disaster scheduled for the end of the day.

The movement and platforming are a little unpolished and can therefore get frustrating (or be useful for speedrunners looking for shortcuts, as the guides will attest). Happily, platforming isn't used very often, and it isn't too difficult to figure out what to do for each puzzle. The crow you appear to be teamed up with on some sort of secret mission will drop hints throughout the first portion of the game as you try to figure out what exactly is going on in the town. Due to being on a volcanic island, the town also has a fun tide mechanic you need to work around, which can reveal new parts of the map as it lowers or allow new places to be swum to as it rises.

Overall, a fun little puzzler well worth its <$4 asking price.