Recent reviews by handloff

It's a fun little box delivery game

I don't really get why people don't like it compared to other Paradox titles.

Trains. 🚂

There's a 10 year old playing this game as their first RPG, and will then measure every other game they play the rest of their life against this one.

Honestly, I can't see myself playing more than a thousand hours

A zombie-themes plate spinner that you can enjoy for a couple of hours every once in a while. Worth $3, in any case.

The Long Dark but in the desert, shorter, and free

I'll start with cyberpunkdream's (CPD) very worst attribute: its action economy. Especially if you skim the text, you can blow through your action limit in about 15 minutes. It gets better, of course, if you pay money for additional actions, and there is the problem. That being said, the game wouldn't really work with unlimited actions - it seems designed to played in a very particular way.

CPD explicitly ties itself to real life timing - this is the sort of game that's meant to be played in short bursts over multiple weeks. You cannot, no matter how much you pay, progress through all the content without waiting. Frankly, I appreciate what this does in a narrative sense, there's a lot of stories that just wouldn't make sense happening all in one day.

And to be clear, the writing is one of CPD's strengths. The stories and setting is great, and this is obviously a passion project, apparently almost entirely from one person. It is unapologetically grindy, but, in some ways, this probably isn't to off the mark for playing a character who exists in a cyberpunk dystopia. You aren't going run massive smuggling operations, or large scale drug transactions, before you've busted your butt on the streets for weeks.

So, can it be frustrating? Absolutely. You're going to fail some BS skill check and have to wait until tomorrow to repeat that same stupid grind tomorrow. But you're also going to get lucky sometimes, pull of something incredible, and, when you really get into the groove of things, start being a player in a really cool cyperpunk world. I'll definitely be coming back to it for a while to come.

It takes the gameplay loop of This War of Mine and adds a bunch of fun content. Absolutely worth what they're asking for it.

Is there something wrong with me that working as a Shipbreaker seems like a better job than my real life one?

-After 15 minutes of work, you pay off at least .1% of your debt
-Training only takes about 15 minutes
-In about 30 hrs of work you experience a pretty solid feeling of mastery
-You have only one co-workers who, while somewhat repetitive, always reminds you when your shift is about to end
-Your only perceptible boss is a suit-based AI that tells you helpful things like the fact that you're running out of air to breathe
-You can blow things up without getting fired
-While expensive, your insurance deductible covers all health conditions, including death by incineration (no link to the last point)
-Most importantly, you get to work in space with cutting lasers and gravity gun to tear ships apart

10/10 - ready to sell my genetic code to the next company who will take me into space

(seriously though, the game is only $20 and is the only early access release that I don't regret buying at launch)