Recent reviews by Patchingko

Don't call it Picross or Nintendo's lawyers will throw you in Mario jail! It's Jupiter's typical high quality nonogram experience but this time with a crafting theme and progression and with a cute wizard character. Looks like 280 puzzles plus a puzzle sharing feature which might be fun. Looking forward to hours of LOGIART (not Picross, don't arrest me Mario!!!)

I waited to review Midnight Suns until it had been updated to be Steam Deck Verified and I’m happy to report that a lot of the kinks associated with trying to run the game on the Deck have been worked out. I continue to bypass the 2K launcher and such but now the auto-detected settings largely work well and the game maintains stability for the most part (with some exceptions in cutscenes or at the abbey, which is unfortunate). Graphically it looks better than it did before becoming Deck Verified, but there are still also hiccups related to shadows and volumetric fog—I had to tweak those a lot to keep the game from going extremely dark in some places.

All that said, I really enjoy this game on the Steam Deck. It’s very much a Firaxis game despite the Marvel theme and card-based abilities. Some folks are not into the Abbey parts where you build social links, but I enjoy the meta game there quite a bit (plus it’s almost all skippable). The characters are by-and-large fun (Tony Stark sucks but Magik, Blade, and Spider-Man make up for him).

To me the best part of the game is how every character is truly unique. This is a big differentiator from the X-COM games (which I love). Every mission you pick 3 heroes and you know going in what toolkits you’re gaining access to. For example, with Spider-Man, you’re doing chain kills and environmental damage while wit Nico you’re doing healing and status effects. The Hunter represents a new Marvel hero and is frankly OP but that’s kind of the point. The game offers a lot of higher difficulty options to let you stretch the more powerful heroes like Hunter, Hulk, etc.

Big recommend to fans of the genre and Marvel fans.

Pretty straightforward deckbuilding card battler. Reminds me of Clash Royale. Gotta say, though, I cannot stand the meme stuff the announcer says. Have a little dignity. But still, pretty fun and worth a try (it is free, after all).

At this point, Kingdoms and Castles is a cute Civ-lite that mostly focuses on resource gathering and building out your castle. It definitely held my attention, but it could use a bit more educating players as they start it up the first couple of times because, as is common in games like this, when you first try it you're totally clueless and end up with a late game that needs to basically be scrapped and restarted. But that's honestly a minor complaint. Considering the price, I definitely think you'll have a good time if you liked Polytopia or Civ in the past.

I like pinball video games, but I'm not going to claim to be an authority on them generally. When I first fired up Demon's Tilt, it felt to me like the flipper's will a little "sticky"--not responsive the way I like. It also felt like, with so much going on visually, that I had difficulty tracking the ball. However, after just about ten minutes, it had clicked with me. I felt like I could see basically keep track of the ball and I had grown used to the feel of the flippers. The table itself clearly has a lot of depth and transitions to it that keep it interesting into later in the game. The tilt is clearly a fundamental part of the game as it doesn't just bump the table, but rather powers up the ball and spins it in the tilted direction. Also, the music and sound effects are reminiscent of some of the greats of real pinball (Black Knight 2000 certainly comes to mind).

I imagine I will keep loading up Demon's Tilt for a few rounds pretty regularly, which is really all you can ask for from a pinball game. If you're looking for a pinball game like that, check this one out.

Fun take on tower defense. Third person over the shoulder with traps. Plus it's nice and cheap!

Fun times. Diablo + Half-Life. Come play with me sometime.