Recent reviews by Audish

Usually when I write a review, I start with all the good points and transition to the bad stuff. It seems like a more fair way to present information and makes the reading experience a positive one. But we're not going to do that here, because the one thing you need to know about Lichdom above all else is that it is too damn long. I don't mean in terms of time, either, because one playthrough will last you about 20 hours. However, those 20 hours are stretched over just eight levels, and three of them are simply continuations of the previous levels. There's a lost city level, two ice levels, two desert levels, two swamp levels, and a proper city level. With each of those lasting 2-3 hours, you're going to be wandering through seemingly endless stretches of glacier and sand and muck.

It's not just that either, because the level design contributes heavily to the insane drag. This is mainly an arena shooter, where you wander until you hit a big open room and then get stuck there as you splatter waves of enemies. Outside of these brawls there are no puzzles, no doors, no interactables, almost no alternate paths, and very little reason to explore at all. There are some side fights and usually one or two secret dungeons that can get you valuable piles of spell components, but in terms of gameplay you're just getting harder versions of the fights you're doing normally. All this means that what you get in the first two hours is what you're going to get times ten, with arguably even less variety as you progress.

I'm beating you over the head with this because it's a huge, potentially game-breaking flaw in an otherwise tremendous title. If you can get past the monotony of the prodigious levels and battles you will be treated to a vibrant, action-packed magical brawler. There are no swords or bows, just spells that do exactly what you want because you craft them yourself. Over the course of the game you'll unlock eight sigils which determine the spell's base, including common elements like fire and ice but also more curious concepts like corruption and delirium. Each sigil has three spells attached to it, and you can have three sigils ready to cycle through at a time. There's a targeted spell that can be built as a homing missile, a bomb you lob, or a channeled beam. There's an AoE spell that can be an explosion, a pool, or a trap that must be triggered. And there's a nova that has conditions for triggering it depending on your shield, which itself is a craftable defense that determines how you can block and teleport.

And we haven't even gotten to the spell effects! Your attacks can be direct damage, a status effect, or a damage multiplier, which also varies in its function by sigil. Fire spells can knock down and burn over time, lightning spells can stun and chain across enemies, delirium spells can mind control and make enemies flee, and so on. Spells can critically hit for additional effects, or be charged before casting for a guaranteed crit. Charged spells can do a special crits charmingly named "apocalypticals" which give you a bonus effect based on the inflicting sigil. You can craft special synergy spells that use two sigils instead of one and have awesome room-clearing effects like collapsing black holes or summoning exploding zombies or conjuring a hurricane. All the parts to make spells drop as Diablo-style tiered loot with different stats and effects, meaning you can spend a huge amount of time just learning the crafting system and making immensely powerful spells.

You'll need them to get through the thousands of enemies standing in your way, too. Your foes are a motley bunch of cultists and demons with some very creative designs and fair variety of attacks. They tend to have a lot of health, too, but this can be overcome easily with proper spell design and coordination. And there's nothing quite as gratifying as catching a bunch of skeletons in a gravity well, freezing them, and then blowing them to hell as you dance around the battlefield. The scenery for the action is lush and detailed as well, which helps make the long slogs through levels at least look interesting. Some of the setpieces are actually pretty inspired, and one even made me gape when I realized what it was.

The story could help serve as a motivator, but the real stars here are the voice actors. You get to play as Troy Baker or Jennifer Hale, and whichever one you don't pick becomes your chatty NPC traveling buddy. They're constantly sniping at each other with witty jabs, cursing like sailors and proclaiming their greatness. Your mentor figure is Clancy Brown (swarthy Lex Luthor from the Superman cartoons!), and the villains and side characters all turn in quality performances that admittedly veer more towards traditional fantasy. I will say that the plot does something dumb in the swamp levels that cuts into the voice acting fun quite a bit, but by that point you're probably just trying to power through to the end.

I'm not going to lie, I love Lichdom: Battlemage. It can be a hard game to love, because there really is too much of it and I was starting to burn out on it halfway through. But the magic crafting and giant, chaotic battles kept me going, and I'm glad they did. If you can beat the game there's a cool New Game Plus mode with randomized challenge maps (that really should be unlocked from the start) so if you can power through there's a more fitting way to enjoy the combat. With a game like this though, you really just have to give it a chance. I don't normally talk about price but pick this one up on sale for like five bucks and give the first level a try. If you're cool with more of that for another 20 hours, then enjoy depopulating a faraway kingdom with fire and locusts and zombies and time rifts. Forever.



Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!

Do you remember the feeling you got when you saw the strange, grand architecture of Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back? Or the impossibly huge geometry of V'ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture? Or the cityscape in Blade Runner? Well, NaissanceE will bring back that feeling with incredible intensity.

No other game does grand environments like this, I promise you. It's mind-bogglingly huge and familiar and alien all at once, and when you start moving around it you realize that yes, you can get to that bright point on the horizon, it's not just scenery. It's a linear game but the city-type environments are surprisingly open, with optional paths to find here and there. The sound design does an amazing job of supporting the atmosphere, bouncing you between slack-jawed wonder and a creeping unease.

The catch is that's only about half the game.

The other half is split between claustrophobic halls and cubist nightmares. There are a lot of surreal, nonsensical rooms to run through that don't really mesh all that well with the cityscapes they break up. Chapters 5 and 6 (the game is broken into seamless Half-Life-style chapters) seem to double down on the weirdness, which was a little disappointing because of how much I enjoyed the city bits. The puzzles are also rather hit or miss, generally being rather easy and not very clever. I will say that there are some jumping puzzles in Chapter 4 that were pretty frustrating in how little sense they made, and an eye-searing puzzle in Chapter 5 that almost made me quit the game entirely.

The second-to-last chapter is pretty interesting and very wide open. It makes me think there's even more to find in the game, though there's no real payoff for exploration besides seeing what other weirdness the world contains. The last chapter is a little frustrating until you figure out what it wants you to do and the ending is pretty blah. I think there's something deep going on with the story but I haven't picked up on it. I just feel like there's something there. I honestly think the atmosphere is good enough to justify the purchase, but be aware there are more than a few flaws.

In this bite-sized side-scrolling adventure, your little insomniac person goes for a walk at night and gets hoovered up through a portal to a quaint alien world. All the language there is communicated visually with lines arranged on a 9-node grid, and at any point you can draw and say a symbol to get a response. There’s a school where you can learn how the language works if you’re paying attention, and several aliens roaming around to converse with. Strangely the puzzles you have to complete to get home have nothing to do with this language, and are instead gauntlets of moving blocks and rotating circuits. You have to finish 25 of each of the three puzzle types to get home, which would be excessive if it didn’t all take you less than an hour. The charming monochrome graphics and peppy sounds help make this one a fine way to tease your brain for a bit.

You can find more mini-reviews like this one, along with full reviews and other features, at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!

They didn't exactly go nuts when naming this game. A Story About My Uncle is one of those games where the gameplay takes place as your character relates a story about his uncle to his daughter. In this case the story is the narrator's fantastic journey through an alternate dimension to find said uncle, and the gameplay is some straight-forward first-person puzzle platforming. The main gimmick is your grappling beam, which honestly is more like the grapples from those ancient Quake II mods than the one from Tribes or even Super Metroid. When you hit something with the grapple it pulls you straight towards it, making Tarzan-like swinging a bit of a dicey proposition and most of the challenge centered around not catching your grapple point with your face. Your "adventure suit" has some other nifty tricks baked into it though, like a super jump and rocket boots, and these are unlocked as you progress and grant some much-needed variety to the platforming. The levels are fairly varied as well in terms of look and layout, though one is unpleasantly dark and the last is unpleasantly hard. This wouldn't normally be an issue, except the game is only about five levels long. It'll still take you a good three or so hours to get through them all, but it makes the weaknesses in the level design that much more apparent.

A lot of this can be forgiven when you reach the game's set-pieces, though. ASAMU has some gorgeous levels and scenery, and regardless of how you feel about the gameplay are worth seeing for yourself. Screenshots don't really do them justice, as you'll be observing them while plunging through the air at otherwise fatal speeds. The presentation does a great job of imparting vertigo when you disengage from a grapple at a peak, or plunge to your demise. The story is also quite strong, as should be expected from any game with "Story" in the title. Your narrator muses in a heartwarming way about his wayward uncle, spinning a fantastic story for his daughter. There are secret story beats to discover as well, which flesh out the narrator's relationships with the rest of his family. You get to interact with a few colorful NPCs, too, including one that actually gets some character development. It's a charming package through and through, only spoiled by some particularly frustrating bits of platforming near the finale.

It can be hard to find a good game to chill out with. Even the friendliest-looking games can confound you with tricky jumps or brain-teasers when you don’t need it. At the same time, games lacking that excitement can easily become dull or unengaging. That’s what makes Hero of the Kingdom so special, the fact that it can sit in a perfect place between relaxing and interesting, just engaging enough to keep you going but not so much as to ever stress you. It accomplishes this through a rousing adventure full of charm and discovery, and entirely absent any way to lose.

You are but a simple youth, living with your simple father on your simple farm. One day he goes off to market, and while you’re out picking berries and chopping wood bandits burn it all down and take off after Dad. As a budding protagonist you’re not about to take that lying down, and so begins a grand journey that will lead you all across your quaint little kingdom. Everywhere you go you’ll find peasants in need, boulders and fallen trees in your path, and wildlife threatening your quest. But the land is also rich in resources, and with enough work you’ll find everything you need to overcome your challenges, find your father, and unravel the dark secret that plagues the kingdom.

This is an adventure game, first and foremost, played out on static scenes of pastoral villages and rugged wilderness seemingly captured from a strategy game like Stronghold. There are no units to move here, though, as everything is accomplished by clicking on hotspots. They’ll pop up bits of dialogue and available tasks, everything from chopping trees to picking corn, building boats to slaying orcs. You’ll collect resources in your journey which are expended to complete tasks, and everything can be traded in one way or another to get the tools you need to progress. Gold can buy food, food can restore energy, energy can complete jobs for gold, and so on.

It almost feels like a trading game at times, though everything is laid out to allow you to progress towards your goal rather than turn a profit. Despite the hero appellation you’ll be spending most of your time helping the seemingly helpless peasants with their problems. You’ll gather berries for an herbalist, help a miller produce flour, repair bridges with construction crews, and train soldiers at a military camp. There are battles at key points but they play out the same way, as chains of tasks that require resources, this time swords and arrows and potions instead of hammers and planks and rope. None of this is timed and there are no moves you can make that will end in failure or lock you out of victory, so you can relax, explore, and experiment all you want.

Exploration is one of the better aspects of the game, adding a much-needed layer of gameplay atop the trading and questing. Every scene has a load of hidden resources to pick up, everything from mushrooms and eggs to hidden treasure. Some of these can provide shortcuts through certain quests, while others can open up whole new quests entirely. There are several parts of the world that are inaccessible unless you complete side or secret tasks, and are in fact entirely optional to the main story. That was what sucked me into Hero of the Kingdom more than anything, the fact that I could wander away from my duties and find an enchanted island on a lark.

While this isn’t the most technically accomplished or deepest game, it’s found a place in my heart as one of my favorites. The graphics manage to be just as clear and detailed as they need to be, and the soundtrack is just rousing enough for the grand journey before you. It’ll take around three hours to finish, plus another hour or two if you want to go for full completing, which feels like the perfect length for a game like this. The appeal of a no-pressure quest through such a fully-realized world can’t be overstated, allowing you to be a hero of not just the kingdom but the people with minimal stress. This is one of the most relaxing and rewarding games I’ve played on Steam, and it’s an easy recommendation to anyone looking for a fun way to chill out and game.



Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!

Spec Ops wants very badly to be the thinking man's Gears of War (or Binary Domain), and now you know exactly where I'm going with this review. I can't really talk my way around it, this game lives and dies on its story because everything else it does has been done before, and spoiler alert, the story ain't gonna save it. You and your two gruff, snarky squadmates trek into Dubai after a biblical sandstorm annihilates the city on the lookout for survivors. What you find are rebels and remnants of the US Army regiment sent to aid the populace engaged in an endless shootout, which you of course join. It's third person action with sticky cover, two weapon slots, and thankfully enough guns to give variety to the 6 hours or so (I guess, I think I'm like 2/3 of the way through) of shooting hundreds and hundreds of dudes. Levels are pretty short and fights are pretty challenging on the upper difficulty levels. The graphics are pretty good but it really just looks like a very sandy over-saturated Divide from Fallout: New Vegas to me.

So that's it, it plays like Binary Domain, but with none of the clever characters or entertaining story to prop it up. It's very much Apocalypse Now with an extra dose of "no YOU are the monsters", and honestly that's where the whole thing falls apart for me. I've never liked this trend in shooters to make the player character question the morality of their actions, because that moment of self-doubt always comes after murdering like a hundred other people. The whole thing hinges on clear good guy/bad guy labels to conveniently absolve the player of inconvenient guilt, and it's honestly pretty gross. In Spec Ops you get a few chapters of grizzled "This is ♥♥♥♥♥♥" as you mow down rebels and fellow US soldiers, and then the thing happens and all of a sudden you're supposed to feel like a REAL murderer. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ really? No game has really pulled this off well; the best example I can think of is Modern Warfare 2 and that was because it came very early in the game and they dialed the atrocity up to 11 for shock factor.

Before THE TWIST it was a mostly unremarkable third person shooter, afterwards it was an unremarkable third person shooter with the albatross of MORAL CHOICE EXCEPT WE MADE IT FOR YOU hanging around its neck. I wanted to see it through in the hopes that the story would eventually redeem itself somehow, but the bland gameplay was the final nail in the coffin. I won't fault anyone who got invested in the story, but I was expecting better.

Hidden object games are almost universally cheesy, and that’s not really a knock against the genre. Being the casual fare that they are you generally wouldn’t want something that takes itself too seriously, but at the same time you don’t want something painfully camp either. The real gems are the ones that hit the sweet spot between camp and charm, and this one lies squarely in that area. The Secret of Serpent Creek embraces its B-horror roots to present a story with monsters and murders with as much fun as it can muster, throwing up goofy jumpscares and bizarre puzzle logic that for once feels right at home.

Your pal Helen Hunter wandered off to the coastal town of Serpent Creek to investigate their odd traditions, leaving only a panicked plea for help behind. Lucky for her, you’re an accomplished paranormal investigator so unraveling the mystery should be child’s play. The darkened town is winding down their snake festival but killers and quakes abound, tearing up both the populace and the roadwork and making your job that much harder. There are plenty of scenes to hunt through for random items, though, items that will come very much in handy when trying to cross a chasm in the street or get a doorbell working again.

Right in the first five minutes of the game, you’ll be accosted by a shadowy creature and meet the most obviously disguised villain in history, both played completely straight. Serpent Creek is chock full of bodies to discover and monsters to ward off and the treatment feels so much like the classic 80s monster movies stations would show late at night. Your avatar will never get too rattled by anything she meets, no matter how deadly, and the campy characters and their hilarious voice acting only add to the charming atmosphere. The game benefits so much from embracing its inspiration, making it even more of a light-hearted romp than purposefully serious or silly titles in the genre.

Atmosphere is nothing without solid gameplay, of course, but 9 Clues does not disappoint here. It’s a standard HOG, full of static scenes to ply for items and puzzles and object scenes to snatch random garbage from. The series namesake gives it an extra feature though, investigations where you have to find 9 pieces of evidence to reconstruct a crime. There are also recurring puzzles like lockpicking that lend a small air of cohesiveness to the gameplay. Other puzzles are quite standard matching or pathing challenges, none of them very challenging. Neither are the hidden object scenes, posing only 9 items for you to find per scene and making them large and clear enough to find just by clicking at random. Easy puzzles aren’t a real knock but you’ll have to revisit every hidden object scene at least once, which makes them even easier and introduces some irritating backtracking.

That and some rough adventure game logic like needing a knife to open a soda can so your nails don’t break are the only nits to pick with this one, really. The hand-drawn art is colorful and expressive, seemingly pulled straight from a classic Goosebumps cover. The sound design is up to the task as well, and the whole thing will take you around three hours or so to work through. It’ll be a riot the whole time, too, chasing murderers and snake people around this strange little town while collecting gears and gems to open overcomplicated doors. This is one of the rare times that the atmosphere of a hidden object game really meshes with the quality and presentation, making the most of its B-horror origins to engage and delight.



Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!

Haunted Past is another game from the developer of Princess Isabella, Gogii Games, and is pretty clearly a more recent creation. The graphics are cleaner, the art is better, and the scenes are more detailed in terms of animation and sound. It also feels like a more mature game in tone and design. The haunted house motif is done without jumpscares or loud stingers, and the puzzles are quite a bit more challenging than the ones in Isabella. It's a very polished game, though still a bit dated. One strange omission I should mention is that there's no map, and thus no fast-travel between rooms, but the game flow is quite linear and they had the good sense to include a few shortcuts where backtracking is needed.

Gameplay is a lot of point-and-click puzzling through rooms, with the hidden object scenes almost a secondary feature. Worth noting that with the better graphics, the hidden object scenes are actually easier since everything is more distinct. The big gimmick of the game is the "spirit world", which is alternate ghostly versions of rooms where you can find additional items. Not only do you have to find the items, you have to "hide" them in a place you can retrieve them in the real world, because ghosts will steal them or some ♥♥♥♥, I don't remember but it was dumb. These aren't particularly challenging puzzles but they add a little much-appreciated variety. Unfortunately, the main draw of the game, the puzzles, suffer from some really obnoxious design. Two examples:

- You have to match up the birth and death years on some funerary urns. These dates are on gravestones in the cemetery, but finding them isn't enough. You HAVE to find three pieces of paper and three pieces of charcoal to make rubbings of the gravestones, and THEN you can match up the dates. It's a completely unnecessary step that got me stuck for awhile because I had no idea why the urns wouldn't let me move ♥♥♥♥ around.

- You can't use items on other items directly, which lead to a couple aggravating situations where you have to use a piece of paper on a SPECIFIC background spot to lay it down, and then use a pencil or whatever on it to get the thing you're trying to do done.

If you can deal with some outdated puzzle design, this is a solid 2-hour game that actually falls more on the point-and-click end of the spectrum than hidden object, but should suffice for either.

I was still relatively new to hidden object games when I jumped on Princess Isabella, but this title felt like a good way to ease into the genre. You play a magical princess whose castle was cursed by an evil witch. To lift the curse, you have to click on lots and lots and lots of things to make potions, scare off ghosts, and reassemble all the locks and clocks and musical instruments that people hide ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ keys in for some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason. Let me say up front that this is a perfectly serviceable 2-hour game, with lots of stuff to find, lots of simple puzzles, and some lovingly pre-rendered backgrounds. I get the impression that this is aimed at younger players, because none of the puzzles are very challenging at all, even the ones I am traditionally horrible at like sliding blocks and solo noble. Technically it is less than impressive, seeing as how the resolution only goes up to 800x600 and the Steam overlay is busted, so don't expect to post lots of goofy screenshots for your friends.

There's a weird, childish naivete to these games that I really like, and this game has it in abundance. In this one you get a fairy sidekick who gains powers like fire and wind to help you interact with things. The first power you get is a rock, which you use to smash fine china and vases to find trinkets within. Your companion signals these with a very excited "This could break!" before smashing the hell out of them. Many of the rooms are cursed with some kind of "evil", which often takes the form of skulls, snakes, and menacing garden statues to click. Some ghosts you feed ghost food or drive off with dance music, others you set on fire or shoot with a crossbow (worth mentioning that I am 3/4 for "crossbows essential to hidden object game"). Near the end your fairy friend cheerfully encourages you to capture a bunch of fireflies and then burn them alive in a jar to "release their evil". It's like someone asked a 5-year-old to tell them a story about a princess battling evil and then made a game out of their 40-minute rambling.

My favorite part is the "plot twist" about the witch, which I won't spoil here. Instead, I'll mention that this game has a very unique feature for hidden object games, that being a boss battle! The final room is an INCREDIBLY dense hidden object scene, and you're racing to find spell components on your list before the witch finds the ones on hers. She even has an AI pointer so you can see where she's looking! It was a super cool feature and I'd love to see a hidden object game that did more with it. Overall a fine, low-key clicking experience with enough charm to make up for looking like something made by an edutainment company in the early 00's.

1000 Amps, if you're not familiar with it, is a short and simple metroidvania game where every room is a puzzle. Your little dude there, Plug, is trying to power this huge amp network back on by touching all the light blocks in every room. You have a power meter in the top right, and every block you light up charges it. This power lets you jump higher and use the abilities you unlock later like teleporting. Rooms can have anywhere from one to dozens of blocks to find, with conveyors and lifts and one-way walls and other obstacles in the way. A major strength of the game is that it is very open; once you descend from the tutorial area to the main hub, there are four paths you can take. While your guide character suggests one as the easiest, you really are free to take whichever you want, which lets you unlock powers in whatever order you want. The puzzles get pretty challenging, the powers are clever, and there's a lot of secret rooms and areas and items to uncover.

I only have two real knocks against this game. The first is that the map in this game is terrible, especially when going for 100% completion. Incomplete rooms are gray outlines, complete rooms are lighter gray outlines, and the room you're in is outlined in white, all on a black background. Rooms also share borders, which makes it really tough to find those last few you're missing. My other gripe is that the final boss is a real ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. The concept is good, but you have to fight him in four phases and the last two can be really tough. Of course, if you botch any of the phases you have to do the whole thing over. One other thing worth mentioning, I think I kinda broke the game by finding a "secret" power really early on, so the openness of the game can definitely work against the challenge factor.

It's cute and its clever and the problems don't really rear their heads until the very end, so I'd say this one is definitely worth a few hours if you have it or a few bucks if you don't.