Recent reviews by Erbkaiser

Obviously inspired by Dorfromantik, Pan'orama takes a different approach to the tile placer gameplay. You don't connect paths - you "just" connect tiles of the right type. Where it becomes complex is in the limited number of tiles you have available, with the only way to earn more to complete buildings, which take a lot of tiles to complete, or to complete smaller tile sets.
Buildings unlock bonuses such as double points for all farms, or upgrading existing tiles for extra points. Points in turn unlock the building blueprints you can drop on the map.

This all starts out as a really relaxing game, right until you get to the challenge mode. In my longest game to date, which took 5 1/2 hours, I still only managed to place 62 out of 73 buildings before I ran out of tiles. To win the challenge mode, you must place all buildings.

The challenge mode keeps me coming back to this, though, despite the stress it causes.

So if you are looking for a relaxing tile placer, play the normal mode, and if you want a really tough challenge, do the challenge mode. Either way, Pan'orama has a lot to offer.

Magic Kitten* 2 is a small adventure game set in not-Hogwarts. While it's called chapter 2 and presented as a sequel to the first game, it is mostly unconnected with changed backstories for the main character and the girl Jeannie, and many of the characters from the first game do not appear.

*Yay, censorship!

Gameplay is a series of fetch quests for the girls as you solve a mystery, split up with several minigames. Winning the minigames or completing a girl's quest line leads to an unskippable sex scene. These scenes are very nicely rendered and unique for each girl.

Overall this is a massive improvement over the first chapter in most cases, but not the translation. While it is nowhere near as bad as chapter 1 which could not even get the character names consistent, it still is riddled with occurrences where a girl is referred to as 'he', and the main character who is supposed to be the head boy is referred to as head teacher, president, or other vaguely similar terms throughout.
A really weird translation choice is that a certain herb you have to collect is referred to as a 'dead girl'.

The technical issues from chapter 1 are gone, and the world is a lot larger than in the first game. If it weren't for the horrible translation I would recommend this without any objections.

Get this at a discount.

A basic adventure game set in not-Hogwarts where you are sent on fetch quests by girls so that you get to have sex with them, with some mini-games along the way.

I would enjoy this more if the translation wasn't so god-awful. I assume it's machine translated from Russian, as they don't even have consistent names... Jeannie becomes Ginny, for example.

There are also technical issues. The game screen is completely non-functional if Gsync is enabled; and if you use a 21:9 or wider resolution the highlights for objects and exits are offset.

The plus side? The renders are nice and the sex scenes are varied. Every one is different.

Get this at a discount.

Take a sniff of The Stanley Parable, a hint of Doki Doki Literature Club, and stir it in a Lovecraft pot.

Beautifully horrific, doing things with the visual novel engine that I have never seen before, and a really good story.

The romance proceeds too fast, and there are some inconsistencies such as MC being a virgin, but also having previous sexual partners.
That asides, the scenes are nice, you get clearly warned before you go on an NTR path, and the voice acting and art are good.

As of this review the game is unfinished, but what is there, is good.

The latest and greatest entry by Travellin Cats yet. 15 unique screens with 100 cats each, each level themed after the city/country it is in, and with cats hidden everywhere as you expect.
A really nice touch is that each level has a unique theme on the signature music TC uses in these games, some of them are really surprising!

Compresses files without using the slow NTFS compression. I am not sure how it works, but it actually manages to save disk space without impacting performance.
A must have for large games.

The sharp blade strikes fast
Enemies fear Sakai's wrath
Honour or shadow

Great Samurai game in its best form, now on PC

Aquatico starts as a relaxing but difficult city builder but quickly ramps up the difficulty as the city size increases, due to some design choices.
The production chain in this game is all important. You need raw resource A to build resource B, which is used for resource C, which along with resource D is used for resource E... any break in the chain and things collapse.
Early on, you are struggling mainly to keep plastic production at a proper level, later on food and luxuries become a problem.
Still, manage to pull it off and you get an amazing feeling of achievement of actually doing something right.
The struggle of having to have everything connected by a pipeline and sharing resources across the entire colony never goes away.
Placement of buildings can also be frustrating. While all rectangular, footprints differ massively in size and you cannot lay a pipe over a doorway, nor can you connect pipes through buildings, you need to go around.
The cages were my main source of frustration since you have to draw them out over the edge and it can be really hard to predict where the portion on land will appear, leading to a lot of restarts. These in particular would work much better if you could draw the connector yourself.

A pretty unique feature of the game is that you manage two levels at once: the ground level which is mainly production space ran by drones and citizens in diving suits, and the dome buildings where the houses and some of the luxury production takes place. As you research and develop more tech you can build bigger and bigger domes, but at the same time you constantly have to upgrade the domes' looks to keep people happy.

After a little time, shark attacks start, and they never end. This means you will need to keep up a line of defence platforms on the edge of the city at all times, which take resources and manpower, and need to partially overlap to be effective. Later, more challenging enemy types are included so you need to add even more defence structures. Sadly, none of this provides any reward, you don't get to harvest the sharks for food or something.

In the campaign, there is an overarching plot where you build up an (unseen) bigger base elsewhere. This means having to produce extra resources and run special sub missions, which can be challenging if you are already struggling to make ends meet.

The presentation is top notch. Great underwater graphics with enough effects to make it feel like you are actually down below and excellent music.

Once you get over the difficulty, this can be a great and mostly relaxing game, but it's not for everyone. Look at some gameplay videos if you are unsure. If you played Patron - this is very much a similar game.
I like it and hope it gets some fine tuning of the more annoying parts in the future.

Cats are in Berlin this time. Nukearts Studio has found a formula and is sticking rigidly to it. There is nothing that sets this apart from earlier games in the series, so it's "just" a well-made cat finding game.

If you are new to the series - pick up whichever is on sale, as they all play the same. For fans of the genre, this is a solid entry.