Recent reviews by Messofanego

(Review based on 1.5 hours)
Utterly charming aesthetically. Hilarious writing. The investigation gameplay kept me on my toes, scanning all the dialogue and information given to be able to make a decision. It's like a cutesy Papers Please in a fantasy setting, and it's intriguing to see the consequences of who you let into the kingdom. I'll continue playing for the writing and gameplay.

Absolutely nails the grindhouse aesthetic and story even if the storytelling is very fast paced with blink-and-miss glimpses of flashbacks to understand Girl's motivation to kill a cult leader. The story ending has a nice dark twist, and in general was reminiscent of Midsommar at times. The sniper puzzle shooting is very satisfying when you figure out the solution, and has great audiovisual feedback. It's very accessible too, just needing the mouse as you move from left to right on a plane to deliver the killing shot that will dart from target to target, and you can leverage blowing up the gas caps on cars or birds in the sky to get better positions. The progression in enemy types pairs well with the abilities you develop like slow-mo, redirecting your bullet, and kaleidoscopic weak spots on enemies. A nice feature is once you've tagged the enemies, their positions stay even if you fail, which means you're not wasting time and can focus on optimising the route for your bullet. Overall, there's a certain dark and vengeful mood this hits along with the killer girl grindhouse aesthetic that makes for an engaging sniper puzzle shooter that doesn't lose steam by the end.

Manages to scratch that same itch of an ultra fast paced FPS roguelite with a visual assault on the senses that I loved in Post Void. Despite the maximalist super saturated colours, it is quite readable to make out the enemies and items (to the point where you don't need the enemy or item scanner upgrades), and there are even melee executions like Doom to increase your life. The story is pretty old-school and kind of sexist in using a big-boobed "virgin" damsel in distress as plot motivation for a stoic, 80s style badass hero but she becomes an actual character by the end. However, I did lile the epilogue and plot continuation to the endless mode and your PEACE CORP handler has good voice acting. The upgrades are a lot of fun in that you're looking forward to beating the levels to keep building up your powerups and modifiers to glean more seconds of life and stronger weapons, even if a shotgun, SMG, or katanas can be enough from start to finish. The levels can get very repetitive in their layouts to the point where you can notice the same five variations of the levels and enemy positions, but when you're in a flow state of speeding past the level (because you only have ten seconds to live in a very Crank-like premise), you don't mind just bopping robots in your quest to kill robobillionaires. The cyberpunk commentary is nothing new but the motivation to get a new set of sneakers is very satirical of 80s and 90s toy crazes, and the humour keeps up until the end. Even some of the bosses are gilarious like a turn-based battle or playing rock-paper-scissors with your tamagotchi. The bosses are much easier than expected and the hardest bits are actually the laser obstacles, but the game definitely gets easier as you progress, gaining permanent upgrades such as being able to keep your latest weapon or any upgrade into the next run. I do want to play more of the endless mode and upgrade all the weapons, but also katana-only runs are completely viable much like Superhot. I played on Normal and will go for the harder difficulties for replayability. It's easy to recommend if you're into anime, arcade FPSs, and some of the other games mentioned here.

This is just comfort food from start to finish. It's full of so much positive reinforcement. From the sound effects to particle fx and rewards every 10 minutes. The level design and exploration are fantastic. There are so many fun nooks and crannies. It's enjoyable to get all the collectibles and they feed into the power-ups and simple but effective skill levelling. Very accessible too, so dont let the bullet hell aspect deter you.

Depressed detectives might not be new such as to the noir genre but one that isn't cool, smoking, or poetic with their words, and is a woman is certainly refreshing in the form of Jeon Gyeong. The game starts off with her narrating and comparing herself to a jellyfish who blindly stings everyone in life she encounters, with an ominous suicide-like ending note. We also know she has memory issues. But a young police officer whose name we don't know arrives at her place, asking her to rethink back to the missing girl case of Choi Seowon. It's a strong opening that leads into a text chat between police and the dad of Seowon who's pleading for the case to remain unsolved. There are plenty of twists along the way, and the last half hour is particularly propulsive, as many things about the characters and events click into place, especially about who you're playing.

The UI of text conversations go into columns, one column for each character, and it becomes more complex as you go along. The puzzles are quite challenging and thankfully there are no failure states, and there isn't a lot of handholding. You can change who the text is coming from, and the chronology of texts, and when you get it right, there's a very satisfying yellow bar animation as the texts link up. Similarly, using fragments from these texts to make for clues that will unlock further conversations is satisfying. There are often images with certain sections of the texts (the art is beautiful and expressive), and sometimes you'll get back into the cutscene between the two women to further the plot along. If you've seen any Korean thrillers, you'll be used to the many twists but here it's also emotionally resonant towards the very end. There are two endings, and they're both great. This comes highly recommended, especially if you're into detectives games and strong emotional narratives.

A short thriller with logical puzzles and a gorgeous comic book art style with bold colours. It has typical quality-of-life features for a point-and-click such as a highlight button and the characters will hint at the solutions through their inner monologues. It does have mental health cliches, so I found the plot to be predictable. It subverts the horror to be more grounded and psychological. Although there is one jumpscare that got my sister! It's clever to start off as the woman, so you're immediately concerned and empathetic for her confusion and fears. When the point-of-view switches to that of a man a few minutes ago, it all clicks together and you hope when they both meet, there will be an understanding reached. I got the good ending, and you'd have to go out of our way to get the bad ending, but it does have a satisfying ending. Would love to see more from Neon Tales, which just seems to be two people so far, Thekla Barck (story, game design, graphics) and Thomas Klein (programming and audio).

Even though the limitations are visible that this was made for the 7DFPS game jam with the limited enemy variety, repeating backgrounds, and storytelling relegated to mainly documents, it's the pacing, gameplay, and scares that are still effective. Having to walk around with a flashlight because the environments are nearly pitch dark black-and-white, but if you spot an enemy, you have to switch to your bolt gun to put down these magical hellish ponies and you're basically spraying and praying. The bipedal ponies that hit you with a mage-like attack make it easier to spot them in the dark but you'll have only that millisecond to aim at them. The shooting feels good, and the enemies gib well as expected for a David Szymanski game. It's quite an inspired setting, mixing religious horror with a meat plant and turning humans into ponies so they sin less to the point where sinning is calculated. The saves are for each level, so if you die, you have to repeat the whole level which are usually a few minutes long but because it's so effectively scary (got jump scared a handful of times), I would be relieved after each level. You can shine a light on a pony, and they won't notice you, so you can strategise when to move and shoot in the dark. Once you complete the main objective, you're escaping all the way back those levels, and even on normal difficulty, you will definitely want to use all the health kits and ammo pickups. Colour gets introduced in this latter half to moody effect, and the story has a great final twist about your character. For less than 2 hours long, finally using the Doom 3 gimmick to good effect, and this price point, it's an easy recommend.

I love firstperson platformers, melee, and parkour games (Neon White, Lovely Planet, Shady Knight, Zeno Clash) or just a strong kick like Dark Messiah, but this just does not feel good to play. Your running speed stays the same at the start of the sprint to the end and there's no momentum, which ends up making the traversal feel quite slow. The trailers make it look very fast, but maybe I'm missing something like an ability or way to run faster. The sliding and wallrunning feel quite stiff and very slow, and it doesn't chain smoothly from sprinting to these other movements. The only time I could feel the chaining of parkour was when you can ping-pong between enemies by kicking them one after the other. After 10 levels, I was already getting tired of the orange visual palette, whooshing sound effects of the wind, and level design. The writing of the banter between the main hooded character (who looks like an edgy kid from the 90s) and the Devil was cringeworthy but the saving grace is their dialogue is quite short at the start of levels. I thought the end of level times for the medals (bronze, silver, gold) are quite harsh, but at least there didn't seem to a medal requirement to get to certain levels. Also, I couldn't maintain a good framerate on the Epic quality level (Nvidia 970M), even though the game looks quite simplistic. It's a shame because I was hyped after watching the developer's youtube videos on the development and this genre being in my wheelhouse.

Impressively surreal and imaginative use of hand-drawn and claymation animation that reminds of the surreal dark animation back in the 80s and 90s. Due to it being essentially an interactive movie where you can only click on one thing to continue the animation, there is some pixel hunting having to be done and some quality-of-life features like highlighting interact-able objects would go a long way, but the puzzles are particularly creative and cute. It's relatively short at just over an hour which makes sense with how painstakingly bespoke the animation and production is, and it ends on a very wholesome musical note.

Surreal, unnerving, creepy, beautiful, thought-provoking, and deep. What starts off as an unusual exploration of a real phenomenon, that of professional criers at funerals who "weep for the dead" ends up becoming an introspective journey of why the protagonist might choose this job and the unraveling of their sense of self through the twisting of their face. Between visits to funerals, you end up at a midnight bus with an odd cryptic bus driver and eccentric, sometimes intensely creepy passengers. There is one that is particularly horrifying who creeps onto your screen with a face out of a Junji Ito story but then there is also one that reminds you of your mum. It's clear the protagonist is hiding a lot and never processed some past trauma, so it ends up coming back to haunt them. Some endings are more satisfying than others, and it's relatively short at less than 2 hours, but this midnight hour macabre journey will certainly be memorable.