Recent reviews by sweetcuppincakes

Decently fun escape room game. I ran into a few glitches (fell through floor, missing audio clue, unresponsive controls), but the missing audio was the only one that halted my progress. Puzzles are mostly easy, but a few that took some thought. The rooms you get are random so there is some replay value if you want to experience all the puzzles. I didn't play multiplayer so I can't rate that. Not great, but I give it a thumbs up since I didn't regret my time with it.

I beat the first final boss back when it was called Monolith. I suck at bullet hells and have the reaction speed of an old man, but even then I felt like it was an underappreciated gem. I don't even know how much further the game goes now, but I'm really happy that it got a second life and a modicum of the recognition it deserves. Masterpiece.

I tried this out based on the overwhelmingly positive reviews and was delightfully surprised. The game aspects are secondary to the story, but I was really impressed by the story. It has a nice mix of "slice of life" and fantasy. It did drag on a bit at times, but it reached a satisfying and touching conclusion. Additionally, the sprite work is really impressive and I appreciated the attention paid to the setting.

Fun and challenging. The moves you learn give you lots of freedom in traversal and combat. The levels are crafted very well to make use of all the tools you've got. The sprite work and color palate are great. It never felt tedious to keep exploring and collecting until I reached 100%. The enemies are fun and different and the music is catchy. All of the issues I had early on were addressed in the 2.0 update.

I'm really glad I found this one. I definitely have my favorites, but I liked all of the games in the collection. There are some clever ideas here and great world-building in bite-sized scenarios. There's better a horror experience here than in some bigger and more expensive games.

This is a fun little gambling game with some interesting variables and a strange style.

It caught my eye because the same dev made an awesome free game called Unsorted Horror (check it out, it's also on Steam). I would pay money for that, but since I can't, I got this one to show my support.

Withering Rooms does an incredible job of blending familiar game genres and and visual styles into something unique. The story is reminiscent of Bloodborne and Silent Hill. The roguelike and soulslike elements work really well together.

It has wild swings from cautious and conservative play when you are fresh from a death and have no inventory to aggressive play when you have built up a good combination of equipment that lets you deal lots of damage (and then swings back down again when you pushed too far and got punished for it). Whichever way I'm playing in a particular moment, I'm having fun.

The room layout resets with each death, so there is some fun in exploring again each time. Puzzles and bosses aren't frustrating roadblocks. You lose most of you items on death and find different stuff each run, which encourages you to try different play styles. The progression of plot and new areas is done well and keeps me engaged and want to keep going. I think I'm still early in the game, but I definitely recommend it.

I'm giving this a very tepid recommend. I really liked the overall premise of Etienne's plight and some of the books he enters. Each of those books takes about an hour to complete and I would have liked to see them fleshed out more. They were compelling enough that I think some of them could be the premise of entire games themselves. For that, I recommend the game.

Negatively, I didn't get much enjoyment from actually playing the game. I understand that there needs to be some level of interactivity if you're not making a visual novel, but Bookwalker is just a step or two above that. There are turn-based battles that are pretty pointless. There is nothing complicated or puzzling about finding items and putting them in the right place in order to progress. You are given choices, but outside of a few changes to dialogue, you are essentially on rails through the game.

It depends on what kind of game you are looking for. If you care about gameplay and challenge, you should look elsewhere. If you are interested in the visuals and want unique plot(s), you might enjoy Bookwalker. However, everything else about this game is pretty weak and even interesting ideas might not be enough to get you through the dull parts.

There is a good game here. With some tweaks, it could be fun. However, I found that the difficulty hindered my interest. I was always on the verge of losing. There is very little leeway, so you can't really pivot your strategy. Money is so scarce that I could only ever afford one thing between rounds. All of this made it difficult to better learn mechanics. I felt like I had to play "cheaply" by making 2-letter words that could be counted multiple times whereas bigger words weren't worth the effort. I didn't mind the look, but some flashy visuals and more sounds would go a long way as well. I can hopefully revisit this review and change it to positive.

All the pieces fit here. Fun exploration and progression. I'm not a fan of bullet hell, but this was the right amount of challenging for me. It is a great example of solid game design all around. Seriously, if you want to make games, play this.