Recent reviews by MagFlare

Much has been said about the rich worldbuilding, the excellent writing, the joyous exploration, the fascinating art style, the boring (but fortunately deemphasized) combat, and the currently unfinished state of the game, but here's what really needs to be said:

a.) the game is an incredibly immersive voyage into a world you've never seen before;
b.) there are a lot of systems that are sort of underdeveloped; and
c.) I made my character drink some wine I made by alchemically combining two throwing knives and then adding a third throwing knife.

I really wish you'd find things in hidden corners that aren't just one of half a dozen potions, but I got sloshed on knifewine, and you can't put a price tag on that.

Follows the well-tread path of wave survival games like Vampire Survivors, Brotato, or Boneraiser Minions combined with the spellcrafting system of Oblivion. The learning curve is brutal and the game doesn't explain itself particularly well, but there's a lot of satisfaction to be had here if you stick with it.

Boneraiser is a great addition to the genre popularized by Vampire Survivors, incorporating more active gameplay with its dashing and spellcasting while still giving you that "I made number go up" joy. Plus it's updated ALL THE TIME and costs PRACTICALLY NOTHING.

A short, quirky physics puzzler that combines the visual style and get-bigger-to-win gameplay of Katamari Damacy, the "ah ha!" moments of Portal, and the friendly bipedal wildlife of Animal Crossing with the simple joy of ruining your neighbors' lives by plunging them and all their most treasured belongings into a yawning chasm. The limited number of things you can do at any given time prevents any of the puzzles from being particularly challenging, but those things range from avoiding cats in the dark to seasoning soup to launching fireworks at a clifftop picnicker, so variety is never a concern.

Chasm is a great Metroidvania that has no business containing roguelike elements. Yes, the map is procedurally generated at the start of each new game, but it'll remain the same for an entire ten-hour playthrough no matter how often you die, and, although some of the minor discoveries are random, you're still visiting the same areas in the same order, overcoming the same obstacles with the same powerups, and fighting the same bosses. The developers could have dropped the roguelike pretense, made the map entirely static, and nothing would have been lost. Heck, they might have been able to use that extra time to create an even more varied and detailed world.

A Robot Named Fight, by contrast, embraces its roguelike nature. The world is generated anew with each death (barring the rare, single-use save rooms that act as extra lives), and a full playthrough lasts about an hour, so you'll encounter a fresh map far more often than you do in Chasm. Meeting certain goals unlocks new areas and items that will appear in future playthroughs, further encouraging replays. And, crucially, you don't know what's around the next corner. In one playthrough you'll gain the ability to slide, Megaman-like, through small passages, but in the next you'll gain the ability to transform into a tiny drone. A switch embedded in an unbreakable wall might need to be triggered by a block-penetrating phase shot, or maybe you'll find a homing electrical gun that can perform the same task even though it functions entirely differently. When you reach a boss door, you'll never know what's behind it. Starting a new game might, if you've unlocked it, place you in what looks like a robotic Ewok village instead of the default robot city. You'll never be comfortable, and you'll always be surprised.

The game isn't perfect -- hosing down every wall with bullets to see which blocks are breakable can get really tiring -- but, despite this and a few other minor gripes, A Robot Named Fight is a game that succeeds as both a roguelike and a Metroidvania. Chasm developers, take note: this is how you make it work.

Here's the thing: one of the main features of the game -- its procedurally generated map -- is almost irrelevant to the experience. Yes, a second playthrough will look somewhat different from your first, but you'll be finding the same powerups in the same areas in the same order to overcome the same obstacles, and once the map is generated then the ten-hour gameplay experience is set in stone. This isn't a Spelunky or a Rogue Legacy, in which the procedural generation directly and constantly impacts the gameplay; this is a straight riff on Symphony of the Night.

But what a straight riff on Symphony of the Night it IS. With its detailed and fluidly animated pixel art, expansive collection of weapons and accessories, and interesting roster of enemies, Chasm will be worth playing even after Konami finally (hopefully?) brings Symphony of the Night to Steam, and deserves to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best Metroidvanias on the platform. It's just a bit of a shame that its most noteworthy feature doesn't affect much, and I'd love to have seen what the Bit Kid team could've achieved if they didn't have the millstone of procedural map generation tied around their necks.

A celebration of the classic snake game with a fun Tron fever-dream aesthetic. Please buy it so Verran can afford more vowels for the next title.

Devotid: How about a fun collection of arcade skill games that replicate the token-gobblers of old?
Audience: Sounds great!
Devotid: Also it'll feature an explorable arcade and prizes you can buy?
Audience: Sign me up!
Devotid: Also it'll take place in a fully rendered island shrouded in everlasting night with a drivable golf cart whose fuel consumption you need to monitor?
Audience: That seems unnecess--
Devotid: And an economy that allows you to sell things ranging from stuffed animals to empty soda cans to exploded fireworks for some extra cash?
Audience: Where would you get exploded fire--
Devotid: Because there's a robot that sells fireworks you can shoot at people's houses?
Audience: A robot? Why is there a ro--
Devotid: Because everyone on this island apart from you is a robot shaped like a bathroom air freshener, and you can shoot rubber bands at them to make them panic?
Audience: I don't understand any--
Devotid: And now there's also a carnival with rides and a selection of classic carnie games?
Audience: Okay, that sounds rad, but--
Devotid: And the bumper car ride is run by the same Jamaican banana who plays the sax at the arcade?
Audience: Who's on the team that made this mad, grim, brilliant vision of a game?
Devotid: Team? It's just me, baby. It's just me.

Evening descends on the snowswept Scandinavian tundra. Six blue-hued archers square off against a samurai. Six bowstrings twang. Six arrows speed toward their target. The samurai, his red armor glinting in the last dying rays of sunlight, shifts his stance. With a barely perceptible movement of his wrists, his blade describes a crescent in the frozen air. Six arrows flip end-over-end in every direction, one catching a blue archer in the throat. The archer tumbles bonelessly to the ground and is still. If his compatriots notice, they don't show it.

And then the samurai crouches, and in an instant he's among the archers, laying about himself with his blade, the cacophony of steel crashing against steel mingling with grunts of pain and screams of surprise. The archers realize too late that their foe is no mere samurai, but a shogun — a powerful feudal lord. Three archers stand, then two. One pierces the shogun's shoulder with a lucky shot, but an answering katana blow strikes him dead before he can celebrate. The last remaining archer, whose head is the size of a grapefruit and whose bow is held behind his back as though he's hiding a present from a toddler, looses an arrow that, predictably, does nothing. A flash of steel leaves him sprawling.

The shogun's breath fogs in the air. He turns limply toward the nearby forest and trudges forward, the arrow in his shoulder a painful memorial to the blue archer's death. There will be more killing before the night is through.

Also, this game is great and you should play it.

A positively joyous playground of impossible topography. The levels are wild, the controls are exactly as tight as they need to be, and the sense of "whoosh" is FANTASTIC.