Recent reviews by Finn The Inhuman

Extremely enjoyable puzzle game with a great aesthetic - it plays like a Paper Please that replaced the dystopian Soviet-like setting with a witchcore one. You are a herbalist whose customers will look for strange plants with unusual effects, and you have to gather them and then identify them with the help of your manual. More puzzle-solving is involved in figuring out the locations of new plants on the map, distilling new elixirs, and generally moving forward the plot involving witchcraft and some kind of demonic familiar summoned by a local practitioner.

I spent way too much time thinking this was set in some kind of whimsical fantasy land in which every town and river has strange and quaint names before realising the map shows literally just the Lake District in Cumbria, England.

An absolute gem; a fun, challenging pixel art bullet hell/RPG mix. Think a twin stick shooter bullet hell gameplay to explore a procedurally generated map made of individual "rooms" that you must clear of enemies before proceeding (Binding of Isaac style). As you explore more and more of the world, you unlock more towns and fast travel spots, find more bonuses, and harvest materials you can use to craft better equipment.

The gameplay is fun, the controls are tight, the art is super nice, the progression very satisfying and enjoyable. There's a plot about your typical sealed Big Bad, nothing particularly relevant but it works for what this is, which is a very enjoyable arcade-y experience. Only gripe I have is that some optional challenges and the final boss feel like spikes in difficulty compared to everything else.

Truly cute and extremely polished relaxing game. I'd call it a puzzle but there's not a lot to "puzzle" you; most objects barely pose any challenge at all. You just tinker with beautiful slightly retro devices and figure out how to piece them back together with a few changed parts, that is all. The pastel aesthetic and smooth yet detailed models are absolutely top notch; there is also some pretty art and story to introduce and tie together the various objects, though honestly the writing is pretty predictable. Bit of a pity as perhaps the best thing that could have improved this game was using the puzzles as a vehicle to tell a more interesting story. Still, as is, it's a very enjoyable experience that doesn't overstay its welcome. Think of it almost as a virtual toy.

A nice concept executed in an overall ok way. The game features a pretty random sci-fi premise used mainly to frame the core mechanic, of going back and forth in the timeline of one week before a deadly fire that kills all occupants of a British shared house. You get to slowly learn about the characters and their issues, and this helps you figure out how to edit the timeline to eventually save them.

I think the game could have done more with the premise. The timeline is influenced just by straight up changing the decisions of the characters at the press of a button (not, for example, changing environmental factors to influence them), and the correct answer is almost always to go for the "better" behaviour which then coincidentally also leads to the characters being able to spot the fire and run away before dying. It's not particularly complex in any sense, and really, it's mostly about discovering a story than solving some kind of puzzle. That said, it's still an interesting concept at least, and if you like narrative games it'll probably be your cup of tea.

The game is stupidly buggy. I played it on two different computers, with different OS. On the first one, it doesn't save, so it's unplayable. On the second, it doesn't play audio during cutscenes or from mission messages... and it ALSO doesn't save. I tried some fixes suggested on the internet and nothing worked. So even though the gameplay itself looks fun enough... from the tutorial section which I managed to play... the thing is so broken I literally can't play it.

Heard joke once: man goes to mechanic. Says he's depressed. Says game seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels naked in a threatening world with a broken weapon he can't repair and is spiralling into defeat. Mechanic says, "Fix is simple. Each area has great room that spawns lots of enemies. Go there and spam Homing Ninja Star until they drop enough green dots. That should fix your weapon." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But mechanic... my broken weapon IS Homing Ninja Star!"

Moral of the story: Homing Ninja Star is your friend, use it often.

A fun roguelite/platformer. It feels like Binding of Isaac got blended with Metal Slug, set in a weird cyberpunk world with inspirations from Greek mythology. The pixel graphics are neat and the controls and responsiveness are amazing; with a controller, the game plays smooth like a dream even on my relatively old laptop, which is important for its particularly frantic gameplay. Much like a lot of modern roguelites since Rogue Legacy, it also implements an upgrade mechanic in which after each run you return to your base and can unlock further characters, rooms, bonuses and so on to make successive runs easier.

The main thing to note however is that for all that it's pretty fun, it's definitely a game that requires you to pray to RNGesus quite a lot. The game isn't too harsh, but each run tends to be decided in the first one-two floors. If you find bad items and start struggling, you're likely to lose. If you find good weapons or items that synergise well, then you can easily snowball and then can stroll through the rest of the game with your eyes closed. Some items are broken, especially in combination with others, and the better you do the more keys/gems/money you can save, which allows you to open more doors and chests, find more loot, and so on in a virtuous loop which ends with you being an absolute god of destruction laying waste to everything around you in instants. Which is satisfying but not what you might enjoy if you're looking for a tough challenge that keeps you on your toes for the whole run.

So I'm going to give this a positive review, but mostly, this is influenced by the fact that the game is free. Interpret it more as a "maybe". You get to try the game and see if it works for you, so do that, but there's very good reason why it might not be your cup of tea.

"Get in the car, loser!" is a hybrid of a Visual Novel and a JRPG about a group of adventurers going on a trip to stop a great evil called the Machine Devil. That's about it. The protagonist, Sam, is a lesbian, the Machine Devil is a clear stand-in for bigotry of all sorts, and in general the whole thing is themed around this, but in the end, the plot seems as simple as they come, and most of the dialogue is just idle chatting between the characters.

The big pros: the pixel art is GORGEOUS. Seriously, look at it, it's amazing. The game feels very polished. The music is good too, and there's a vocal track backing the combat that reminded me a lot of Persona, as well as some over-the-top visual effects for a certain special attack that I appreciated.

The love-it-or-hate-it: the writing, mostly. I'm not crazy about it, but it's very subjective.

The cons: the gameplay loop is what really hurts this game. You travel on the road, which means pushing a button repeatedly and reading dialogue. Depending on the lane you pick, this will be interrupted by fights. Now, these fights actually are a bit of a hybrid between your traditional FF-esque turn based battles and a quick time event. You need to rapidly press your buttons to attack, then you can wait for cooldowns or cycle through various sets of readied attacks to pile up the damage quickly. This gets very repetitive and doesn't allow for much thinking or strategy, because you need to be quick. The attacks are only two per character and depend on which trinket did you equip them; the trinkets are random objects and can be powered up by spending lower tier trinkets, and that's about it. You buy trinkets, equip them, raise them in level until you can buy the next tier of trinkets. The enemies are a choice of two or three set parties, always to be fought the same way, which is not even especially fun or interesting, just a lot of button mashing. Over 1.5 hours into the game, this is all of the gameplay I've seen. I guess at the end of the act there will be a boss, but I have no idea how to tell how long it will take to get there, and how many more of these same, identical, fights, and this very grindy equipment mechanic (no loot, no magic or special items, no drops except for money, no exp and levelling up). In other words, it's kind of a slog, which again, is a real pity, because the premise and interface already look so cool. A properly fleshed out combat system would have done wonders for this game. Sadly, as it is, it's kind of a Visual Novel with an extra helping of fights that only serve the purpose of slowing down the dialogue. Still worth trying since it's free, but I probably won't buy the DLC, and that's a pity because I was very willing to if I enjoyed the game even just a little bit more than I do.

Forget Unity, forget Unreal Engine - if you're interested in game development, especially as a beginner who only wants to do amateur projects, this is the software to use. Completely free, open source, great community, incredibly light and fast to run, intuitive, powerful. Godot Engine is absolutely the best game engine you'll find out there for your personal needs. If you care about making 2D games, possibly with pixel graphics, in particular, then it's sure to be the optimal choice.

A short-ish (I pretty much completed all the important content in my 11 hours of playtime) but very satisfying investigation game. The best way I can describe it is: Vaporwave Danganronpa in a Lovecraftian setting. If that confuses and intrigues you, read on.

Setting aside, it's a classic whodunnit kind of story. You play as Lady Love Dies, an investigator called back from exile to find out who killed the Councile of Paradise Island, a weird metaphysical reality bubble created by a group of immortals called the Syndicate in a bid to resurrect ancient dead Gods from outer space. There's a previously convicted murderer who escaped his jail and was found at the scene of the crime with the blood of the victims on him, so it seems an open and shut case... but of course, it's not that easy. Talk with the residents, snoop around, solve a few puzzles, find clues, and eventually, start a Trial and make your case. The gameplay itself is pretty simple, and it's basically a Visual Novel with an open world setting, but the setting, character writing and dialogue are fantastic and are worth alone playing. Great atmosphere and a really good mystery too - I enjoyed a lot piecing together all the various hints and information as the many mysteries and conspiracies in the island unfolded. Definitely recommended, especially if you enjoy detective stories!