Recent reviews by Avantesma

• Kainga is great all around;
• It's a throwback to an amazing game genre from yore;
• It feels fresh;
• Its simple graphics are super charming;
• Its soundtrack, on-point and uplifting;
• It offers great replayability;
• Also a fair and fun-to-play experience.

1½ year ago, luck smiled at me.
Through a random YouTube recommendation, I watched some guy playing a game that got me immediately interested.
It looked like an RTS, but the art style was unique, intriguing. I kept watching and the gameplay stood out. It seemed... Exotic. So different from what I expected of RTSs. And, yet, familiar.
And then it struck me. Could it be? Populous...?

The obvious inspiration (actually stated more than once by the developer) got me even more interested and, soon, I was hunting for the few clips YouTube had on the game, then in a pre-alpha state.
A couple of hours later, I was in love. I learned from one of the videos Kainga was live on Kickstarter and immediately backed it. Never regretted it.
I was eager to play and thought it would take a pretty long time, but the dev was quick to release the beta version; and what a game! Even in its rough state, back then, it was so much fun and so much fresh.

This quick release was the 1st in what has, BTW, been a remarkable tradition ever since: the game has one of the hardest working devs I've known. Erik Rempen[www.linkedin.com] has been churning out updates non-stop since even before the KS campaign ended, fulfilling all his promises and more.
This specific praise has been a constant theme of my reviews – Supraland, Primordia – and it's not for nothing: I have nothing but respect for the commitment and enthusiasm of these indie devs, that make such excellent games on their own or with very small teams.
It's not easy to pull oneself up by one's bootstraps in a market inundated with millions-of-dollars-budgeted blockbusters. And, still, the games turn out great, while so many of these AAA titles feel like a soul-sucking chore to play.

Steam's tags say Kainga is a city-building game. And I guess that's the genre I'd put it in, too, if pressed.
But it is much more than that.
From the map designs, through the quest objectives, to the tech tree, the game keeps a fresh feel of discovery throughout multiple gameplays. Very in-theme for a game that is, fundamentally, about a leader brainstorming his people's way through survival and hardship, to hopeful prosperity.

Since I know fans of rogue-lites will want to know: yes, the AI and the disasters systems will keep you on you toes, managing your resources and time, before a rival nabs the victory or bad luck strikes and your tribe is obliterated by fire, lightning, beasts, windstorms...
In fact, this is worth mentioning: Kainga's so well-made, many last-moment, turned-tides defeats feel almost good – perhaps, "fair" would be a better word.
Keeping in mind you're playing a tribe that starts from nothing to battle the elements, other tribes and wild animals, it's hard to avoid a sort of reluctant respect for the game when it actually materializes the threats that loom on you from the onset.
Those that dislike challenges or don't feel they're particularly good at management games shouldn't be turned away, however: certain maps and scenarios provide respite; an easier and more relaxed experience.
There's fun for everyone. 🙂

I've let my more-than-a-year-long passion for the game loose and this has already gotten too long. 😅

Primordia is not just one of the best point-&-click games I've played; it is, hands down, one of the best works of fiction I have ever known.

Beautiful graphics, charming æsthetics, delightful voicework, gripping soundtrack. It's all there, but, really, the writing is what shines brighter.
From smart dialogue to engrossing plot, from bewildering amazement to thrilling expectation, from dry humour to truly moving tragedy, from the cold protocols of robots and computers to some of the most human moments you'll see in fiction, Primordia will take you on a wondrous journey: Horatio and Crispin's quest of discovery and devotion.
The fact that all this takes place in a barren planet, inhabited by robots – a setting so similar to many that've been fraught with clichés and formulas in science fiction – makes it even more amazing: the developers managed to pull off such a great game, falling for none of the vulgar traps of the genre.

Speaking of the developers, Wormwood Studios is comprised of only 3 people.
Like Supraland, another example of how far and high talent, passion and hard work – not a big corporate structure – can take a project.

Do yourself a favour and go play Primordia.
Warm smiles, tight throats, excited wonderment and welled-up eyes await.

Valve's character limit won't allow me to add to this review.
I'll have to say it in the comments.

Even after a long delay, devs delivered only a fraction of what was promised on the Kickstarter campaign.
Game feels very short and lacking, even disregarding the expectations the campaign set.

Many reviews here will tell you Backbone feels like a rushed, unfinished product.

Some refer tothe ending. Indeed, I found it unsatisfying. The game is open-ended. And that is something hard to pull off. I don't feel it worked, here. Too many questions left unanswered and I didn't find the outcomes it suggested very intriguing or thought-provoking.

Others talk about the gameplay. And this is where I feel I really have to chime in.
I was a backer of Backbone on Kickstarter and devs who don't deliver what was promised to funders miff me.
I'll go over the devs' promises on Backbone's Kickstarter campaign page:

"Collect evidence, interrogate witnesses, connect the dots and follow leads on your own. No hand-holding - move forward through the game by your own rules. Every case has numerous trails, and it’s up to you to decide which one to follow."

This simply isn't there.
The GIF below this text[ksr-ugc.imgix.net] shows Howard using his nose to follow trails. This doesn't happen in-game. The closest there is aredialogue options in which Howard sniffs evidence (that I'm not even sure influence the story other than those few dialogue lines). That's all.
Also, there are not multiple cases, let alone multiple paths within cases. There is onlyone relatively short case that, then, spirals into the main plot of the game.
I wondered if any of the plot did branch and the outcomes could be influenced (didn't feel like playing the game multiple times to check, though). If other reviews here are to be trusted, that doesn't happen, either.
Comments on this full video walkthrough seem to confirm this.

"In the animal world, smell is the most powerful sense. Hide in multi-level environments, mask your scent in garbage bins, follow suspects and escape the chase."

None of this is present in-game.
There are some very short stealth sections, that amount to Howard crouching and hiding behind objects for a few seconds. And that's it. No sense of smell involved.
There are no multi-level environments. There are no chasing sequences like the one portrayed on this GIF[ksr-ugc.imgix.net].

"The Artifact is a unique ancient technology with unknown origins and purpose. If you learn how to use it, it might change the regular order or destroy it."

There is no combat in the game, with or without special abilities. The scene depicted in the GIF below this text[ksr-ugc.imgix.net] is not in the game.It wouldn't even be possible, actually, due to the role The Artifact plays on the game's plot.

One thing to take away from this, though, is that The Artifact was always a planned plot element and not something introduced by the devs later on, for lack of creativity, as some reviewers here have suggested.

"A rich, living and breathing world waiting to be explored. Backbone takes place in dystopian Vancouver, BC, featuring real locations and breathtaking pixel landscapes."
"The planet is sprawling with anthropomorphic animal species. The streets of Vancouver are overgrown with ivy and humongous trees, branches and vines piercing through the concrete, and huge flowers nesting on top of the roofs."

I'm not from Canada and have never been, so I can't say if the locations portrayed have anything to do with the real city of Vancouver. From what little I know, from the internet, it doesn't seem to be the case. Also, city maps featured in-game have the name "Vancouver" on them (and, perhaps, they follow the real city's geogrpahy, IDK), but, AFAI can recall, the name isn't mentioned in any other context.

What I can say is this: there is no noticeable overgrowth, humongous trees, branches, vines or huge flowers. The closest there isare brief nightmare sequences that happen when Howard is infected by The Artifact, that feature some of these things.
This scene[ksr-ugc.imgix.net] isn't present in-game andwhat little we get to see of the World beyond the Wall, at the end of the game, looks nothing like what's depicted in this GIF[ksr-ugc.imgix.net].

The stretch goals panel posted by the devs[ksr-ugc.imgix.net] claims the funding for voiceover was achieved. However, the only vocals present in-game are some songs, which have lyrics.

The campaign finished in 2018/05/27. The estimated time of release was July 2019. The game keys were delivered on 2021/06/07.
It took the devs 2 years past the estimated release to deliver a product very inferior to what was promised. And it's not on Early Access, either, which, to me, seems like they consider it a finished project that won't be added upon, anymore.
Even though, on the campaign page, they claimed: "Right now everything is ready for production: the game structure and scope, story and plot outlines, character arcs, world building, level design, and production schedules. All that remains is to get the team working full-time, to release Backbone without wasting any time on other projects.".

The changes between the game described on Kickstarter and the final product are so great, it's not even the same genre.
There is no investigative, stealth or action gameplay. It isn't even a point-and-click, as there are so little environment interactions and dialogue options are so limited.
It plays like a very linear and short (I played through it in a little more than 6 hours) visual novel/walking simulator.
If that's your thing and you feel the price is worth it, go for it, but knowing what to expect.

I enjoyed the game to some extent.
The pixel art is nice, the soundtrack is actually very good and the plot itself is good,apart from the ending, as I said above. It really does feel like there was much more to the story, but the devs simply stopped, after some point.

But I simply can't recommend something that feels so less complete than what we backers payed for.
For the very same reason, I wouldn't trust EggNut with a sequel – or any other project, for that matter–, before it is actually released.

Saddest thing is: the game, on its own, is OK-ish and I'd probably recommend it (Not for its asking price, but, still.), as a short indie title, if it wasn't for all those promises.

Character movement gave me such terrible nausea, I'm now convinced the devs are secretly moralists who devised this game as a ploy to give people hentai PTSD.

P.S.: I played in standard mode, as I don't own VR gear.

P.P.S.: yes, I did play for the entirety of the prologue's story. Still impressed with myself, too, since I managed not to throw up.

Septerra Core is an interesting JRPG (I know the game isn't Japanese. I'm using the definition broadly, since it is a menu-based RPG with Japanese-console-RPG-esque gameplay.).



It isn't revolutionarily original, but it's good and has some bold aspects, like allowing the protagonists some grey morality and even letting some characters retain their prejudices and bigotry, regardless of the main character's stances and actions. It also has some rather unexpected adult themes and innuendo at certain points.

Anyone buying a game launched in 1999 should be well aware of this: some quality-of-life features that are pretty much universal standards nowadays simply weren't present in most cases. In Septerra Core, these range from little details – like the game having no support for the mouse wheel or the inability to load any but the most recent save file from the initial menu – to major functionalities – like the absence of fast-travel.
That said, it's quite OK for its time's standards. The combat system, mixing real-time and turn-based mechanics, is specially interesting and opens quite a bit of opportunities for strategic play.

The game isn't difficult, but, again owing to its age, there's practically no hands-holding.
Something that has to be pointed out: at the time Septerra Core was launched, players were really expected to read the game's manual. Some games today still come with manuals, but most of them still include all you need to know within the game itself. This is not the case, here. The game folder for the Steam version includes the manual in PDF and a readme file in TXT for the patches. Both should be read. Otherwise, a lot of the gameplay will have to be learned by trial-and-error alone (and some parts will probably be entirely missed). Some aspects of the plot and setting may also be harder to understand, without this previous reading (although these are, indeed, all present in the game itself).

This is Septerra Core's biggest flaw, IMO. The balancing of characters' skills and levels is very poor.
The game's version of mana is "core energy", with a pool contributed by all characters, shared by the party and consumed by magic and all skills other than basic attacks. The pool is very scarce for almost the entirety of the game; something that would suggest it should be used sparingly, for more dire circumstances, when more powerful skills are needed. However, the cost of skills and magic is absolutely disproportional to their benefits. Magic spells that will almost deplete a mid-game pool deal meager damage, inferior to even the weakest characters' basic attacks. At the other hand, a skill considered basic in many games – scanning enemy stats – costs quite some core energy, is temporary (meaning if the combat drags for a longer time, you'll have to recast it) and doesn't work on many bosses.
The game has a mechanic of combining spells through their card-based system and they do get better when used this way. However, the already steep cost goes even higher. You basically need to use items to restore core energy if you hope to use it more than once per combat. Because of this, I haven't dabbled on this mechanic very much.

EDIT:
I've since tested the spell-combining system. Although combo spells aren't great, they're definitely much more powerful (and, thus, useful) than the individual ones. They still consume a disproportionate amount of your core energy, though.

Leveling and XP are another weak point. Anyone who frequently plays JRPGs knows there are 2 reasonable options for handling the levels of characters which are not on your party: either the game auto-levels them to match the main character's current level or it gives some efficient way of leveling them when needed. An example of games that do the former is Final Fantasy VII. Examples of games that do the later are the Suikoden series (The XP-to-level-up ratio is balanced in such a way that, when a character is severely under-leveled, a few battles will be enough for them to jump several levels and come to around the ballpark of that zone's expected level. A very welcome system in games that have recruiting more than a 100 characters as one of their main selling points.).
Septerra Core does neither. Characters enter your party at discrepant levels, characters that are off-party don't level at all and the XP requirements are absolutely inconsistent: my party once had a character on level 7 that needed more than 11000 XP to reach level 8 and a character at level 13 that needed only a little over 8000 to reach level 14. Even grinding, for those who are willing to do it, is excruciatingly difficult and slow, due to this.

EDIT:
After reading some things online and playing more of the game, I figured out the apparent intent of the character levels' imbalance. It represents the individual characters' potentials and strengths: some are naturally better than others in combat and will need much less training time in order to achieve the same levels. What's more: the game is balanced taking that into account.
This asymmetry is actually an interesting, if atypical, mechanic. Some forms of it were present – and greatly implemented, at that – on the Suikoden series, that I mentioned above.
I found it counter-intuitive on Septerra Core, but I have to concede it's an inventive and refreshing design choice.

I lived through that time in gaming and can confirm: these early implementations of 3D graphics, with their mix-and-match of 3D and 2D elements on-screen, mostly plain textures, "blockiness" (Although Septerra Core actually has very little of this, partly due to its cartoonish art style.) etc., was controversial even then. So it's understandable that many of today's players dislike them. If you're one such player, either don't play this game or be prepared to endure it, because most of it is present.
The art style, although not stunning, is, IMO, well done and matches the ambiance of the game's scenarios.

Sound effects are generic and sometimes dated, but not, IMO, enough to harm the experience. Music is good (The soundtrack is available on Steam, BTW.). But the voice acting is where the game really shines: every single character – all the way to the most generic town NPCs – is voiced and I've yet to encounter a line of spoken dialogue I dislike.

Septerra Core is a good game, although not without its flaws (even for its time), as I've listed and described above. I recommend it to fans of the genre and/or players nostalgic for the late 90s style of games.

Good game.

Fun, if you like idle games, and the gameplay is quite rich, for the genre's standards.

Also, not P2W. I played it for hours and never felt the need to purchase anything with real money (Which... Yeah, not good for the developer's business model.).

Dessert Storm is a match-3 game that is simple and isn't riddled with microtransactions.
Of how many games can you say this, nowadays?
It's good for when you need a time killer game, that you can stop playing at any time.
It's also dirty cheap.

That said, it's still a very poorly designed game.
It's an obvious ripoff of the famous Candy Crush series. Graphical elements are uninspired. Gameplay is sluggish, disrupted by unnecessary animations and imprecise detection of clicks and drags.

As I've read on numerous Steam reviews, I wish Valve would give the option to give products a "Neutral" rating.
Since this isn't possible, I always prefer to leave a positive rating. But know full well that this game is weak, only worth it 'cause it's almost free.

TL;DR: awesome game. Extremely fun to play. Completely worth its full price.

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Supraland is such a great game. Haven't had this much fun playing a game in years.

Normally, I go the r/patientgamers route and wait until a game has a discount of at least 50% before buying it. I've too many games on my backlog anyway.
Not Supraland, though. From the moment I first watched the trailer, I knew I was gonna love it.
I was lucky enough to get a relatively low discount – like 15% or 20% –, but, TBH, I'd have bought it regardless. I haven't regretted a single cent I spent.

The first reason why it's so great is the "awe factor".
It's marvelously set entirely within a child's sandbox. All elements, including characters, items and scenery, are created from household items, much like a child playing would do. In fact, much like I used to do when I was little.
This somewhat simple, yet inspiredly innovative æsthetic choice creates a difficult-to-describe-yet-obvious-once-experienced nice feeling: a perfect balance between affectionate familiarity and adventurous excitement.
I. E.: it captures the essence of childhood.

The only other games I've played that get close to this are the acclaimed LEGO series . And, to me, they still fall short of what Supraland achieves.

The second reason why Supraland's so great, however, is kinda subtler:

The game features a "barebones" gameplay that is very uncommon these days.
I like complex games, but too many games these days are unnecessarily complex: mechanics for the sake of mechanics.

People constantly bash microtransactions and loot boxes and, yes, those surely are awful. But there are lots of games that have no microtransaction, loot boxes or any other "greedy" mechanic at all and still feature unneeded complexity that detracts from the experience.
As the industry evolved, titles were expected to include more and more features, often leading to oversaturation.
The best example of this I can cite is Darksiders II . It isn't a bad game, but it was – IMO – made orders of magnitude inferior to its predecessor due to the completely unnecessary introduction of MMORPG-style loot mechanics.

Supraland, in its simple glory, evokes pre-BotW Zelda games, the Portal series and other celebrated games that are just fun, without trying too hard.

I believe I haven't been this enamored of a game since I first played Terraria .

P.S.: I think the game deserves an honorary mention for the fact that David Münnich, the developer, made this great a game all by himself.
It'd have been no mean feat for a big company to make a game like this. But a single person? Almost unbelievable.

Full Throttle is one of the greatest games I've ever played. And this remastered version does it justice, updating, most notably, graphics and sound.

It has some problems, like:

• I prefer the old, click-drag-and-release, old control scheme, over the new, click-and-click-again, so-called "remastered" one. The developers did include the option to switch between the two, but, unfortunately, the game won't store that choice, meaning I had to go to the Settings screen and change it every time I opened the game.
  
• The controls while fighting in the Mine Road are a little less responsive than I'd like. I remember them being just like that in the original, but I would've expected the developers to improve that in the remaster.
  
• Some scenes, albeit few and mostly within cutscenes, lack subtitles. Although I'm a non-native English speaker, I could understand the game perfectly without them. I still feel this needs to be pointed out, though, because a hearing-impaired player would inevitably miss out on parts of the story.

Despite these problems, I recommend this for any fan of point-and-click games. It's a masterpiece well deserving of its fame as a seminal work in the genre. A landmark in the history of video games.

Terraria is one of the best games I have ever played.
It's fun, it's enthralling, it's clever, it's constructive (quite literally, BTW) and – perhaps most impressively in a world of microtransactions-ladden ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ – it's unbelievably cheap. You pay its low price once and get access to a virtually endless experience – playable (and replayable) in several different styles – that is regularly updated with massive new content for absolutely free, even years after its initial release.
Its very existence feels like a challenge to the gaming industry as a whole, unarguably proving games can be cheap, very good and fully supported by the developer.