Recent reviews by Sam is a Goose

Excellent new Yakuza game. If you liked Yakuza 0 you'll enjoy Like a Dragon Gaiden. Tons of content here from combat challenges to playing pool or poker, for rewarding collectibles.

My only complaint about this game is that it relies a LOT on the other Yakuza games in its story. Definitely don't recommend it as an entry point to the series - check out Yakuza: Like a Dragon, or Yakuza 0 for that.

Not too far into the story, but it's solid fun with a crazy amount to do and explore. Community seems fairly friendly to new players, which is huge because there's a lot of confusing mechanics I find myself asking about.

One thing I don't like is the Store's frequent reminders that I can buy things with real money. To be fair to the developers, Guild Wars 2 handles it in a much more gentle way than other games. And I think one might find more value from the type of content provided here than basic cosmetic purchases in other games?

Anyways, I'm still learning the ropes! Having a good time, looking forward to getting further into the story to the more interesting stuffs.

Guildford Castle VR is a delightful journey into both a modern-day museum and its gardens, as well as a detailed glimpse into its medieval castle counterpart. Guildford Castle is one of the most expansive and informative VR educational experiences of 2022, featuring narrated vignettes across the castle grounds, as well as meticulously detailed set pieces all throughout the experience. These details vary from fully legible written labels around the modern-day museum, to the gallows seen in the distance from the tower parapets.

Guildford Castle VR really caught my attention by the way it told the story of the castle. On pressing the “Tour Guide” buttons scattered around the museum, a narrator would start speaking about the histories and they would do things like show us how the castle changed over time. During these presentations, walls would grow and expand, before going back to normal by the time they were done speaking. I find this to be a cool compromise for storytelling in the world of VR museums! This is an excellent way to gently show your audience what you’re talking about, in real time, without hijacking their viewpoint and experience in the process.

Guildford Castle VR gets a A+ in my book for style and substance. It really is an excellent museum that I hope to see more like. The experience ran mostly smoothly on my old PC, but it had a ton of settings I was able to adjust to make it run perfectly.

I’m really looking forward to seeing more from Historic VR! I’ll be happy to pay for an experience as smooth and enjoyable as Guildford Castle VR.

Follow along for more VR reviews on IndieSamAdonis Reviews Curator Page!

Just Hoops is one of the best games to simulate the simple feeling of throwing a basketball. That’s what this game is all about: shooting baskets at the arcade in a series of challenges of varying difficulty and theme.

Advice for new players: Spend as much time on the easier levels as necessary. Personally, I had a lot of trouble initially just trying to understand how to properly hold the ball with my Oculus Quest controllers. I had even more issues when it came to throwing the dang thing with any accuracy. However, I’m glad I stuck with Just Hoops, as grokking the physics of the game, and being able to score baskets now that I’ve learned is an amazing feeling.

Just Hoops feels like it has a lot of potential to grow – the developer has added several updates since launch. Most recently they added dozens of new challenges and plenty of new cosmetic designs to change things up for players. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next from this team – whether it’s Just Hoops on Quest natively, or a whole new project, I am positive they are going to be... a slam dunk.

Hello, I’m IndieSam! I write reviews on hidden gem VR games for my Steam Curator page - IndieSamAdonis Reviews. A copy of Just Hoops was provided for review through the Steam Curator program.

Madrid Noir is an interactive VR experience telling the story of a young girl named Lola as she pretends be a detective around the city of Madrid, during the summer she lives with her weird uncle. As the story unfolds and clues reveal themselves, the stakes are raised dramatically and there is a great on-foot chase sequence. The story is super cute, with a lot of very nice animation to match the excellent voice acting.

For those that haven’t seen a VR experience before, they’re pretty straightforward. They will almost always be less than an hour’s worth of narrative content where players engaging in the story through minor interactions. These often are things like pushing buttons or pointing items at the action. Sometimes these are optional, but I find they help add to the sense of presence of the films. Madrid Noir, for example, had a scene where we had to aim a flashlight in the dark to help Lola find her way before it would proceed to the next scene.

It’s worth noting that this particular experience did require players to stand so that players could turn in the directions the experience wanted us to be in, to see the characters. I find this kind of setup to be demanding and rude towards its audience- Snap rotation is a standard across almost all of the VR industry, so I don’t know why a developer would choose to exclude the feature when it means the difference between a seated or standing game. Accessibility matters, even in VR, people!

I really did adore the experience, however. Lola and her uncle were great, and I love the animation style so very much. This wasn’t the studio’s first VR experience, as they have previously produced Battlescar and Gloomy Eyes. I can tell Madrid Noir was made by a team of professionals, and I am hoping for more along these lines of quality. Recommended.

I’m IndieSam and you can follow me on the IndieSamAdonisReviews Steam Curator page for more indie VR games, experiences, and more.

Playing through Smashing Time’s half dozen levels was a great time as I got to experiment with lots of the tools and weapons that we’ve been provided. My favorite moment was drawing swearwords with chalk on blackboards in the classroom before smashing all the things. This was in the new School Update which apparently released two whole months after launch.

As for the comfort settings of the game, it was actually fairly easy for me – player locomotion worked mostly pretty well, though there is a need for a clearly reachable comfort settings menu. I did have a small issue with being disoriented when I first loaded into the game, mostly because the load screen looked so bizarre to me.

Smashing Time plays great, even on my 1060 graphics card. Flipping tables, smashing glass bottles, shooting wall art, spray-painting all over the place, it felt really fun. This game is truly unique, as a product only the magic of VR and indie VR developers could bring us. I’m hoping to see more from this developer, as they've shown a lot of potential, hard work, and a style of humor that I appreciate.

Played using a copy of the game sent by the developer through the Curator Connect platform. Follow me, IndieSam, and all my reviews over on Steam Curator for more under-appreciated VR games and experiences!

VR Walking Simulator is something simple: Players will take a nice and quiet walk through the woods in virtual reality with an ingame polaroid camera to capture photos of a variety of levels.

The idea of games with no objectives or enemies is interesting, but it means there’s not much to keep most players engaged after they’ve explored each map. I’m aware some people like to relax in VR headsets and meditate and I wonder if VR Walking Simulator would work for that. The music and background noises are perfect as they are relaxing and mostly quiet.

I should probably add that the VR version of the game worked mostly perfectly for me, but when I tried changing the settings the game went a little crazy, and because of the camera interface, I ended up with a LOT of Steam screenshots of myself stuck under the floor. Once my pure panic stopped, I was able to figure out how to adjust the settings. There is also a non-VR version that runs very smoothly, complete with the camera for screenshots.

The developer of VR Walking Simulator has made something special here – I feel like I would love to see more of this sort of thing in the future, though maybe with a little bit of busywork? I’d love to spend more time exploring these lovingly crafted levels, especially if there was a little more to do in them.

I recommend VR Walking Simulator! Potential players need to be aware there are only so many maps, with not much to do, other than explore some eye-pleasing open spaces while maybe taking some pictures.

Played using a copy sent by the developer through Steam’s Curator Connect platform – Follow me on Steam Curator at IndieSamAdonisReviews for under-appreciated indie games, neat VR experiences, and all sorts of other funstuffs!

Unsighted is best described as something like a topdown Zelda game with a particularly fulfilling combat system with its parries and dodges. Good thing blocking and dodging hits is so very fun and rewarding because most of the enemies here will hit real dang hard.

There are multiple ways to adapt combat styles in Unsighted, from getting new weapons to modifying Alma’s chipboard. New chips are easy enough to find or buy if one has the credit, but the problem is space for more chips. To buy more chip-space, we need the currency of Unsighted – which is where the game turns into Dark Souls in some ways. It follows the typical formula of “kill badguys to get dosh! If ya die, gotta pickup dosh before ya die again!”

Unsighted offers a large futuristic city to explore, interwoven with a variety of ways to explore. The game promises that the way we choose to traverse this world is up to the player. The clock that Unsighted’s city of Arcadia runs on is slowly ticking down with every moment wasted dying or spent exploring. As time progresses, every character in the city will eventually run out of Anima – the energy keeping them from turning into kill-crazy robots. This pressure made it hard for me to enjoy exploring the game once I realized it was there – but there is an Easy mode, as well as an Exploration option for the game.

The developers did a good job putting a variety of options for different playstyles in the game, while maintaining their vision. In addition to the story mode of the game, there are two additional ways to play: Dungeon Raid, and Boss Rush. I was able to get somewhat far into the first Dungeon Raid I attempted, but it was pretty difficult – my abilities at these sorts of sword-fighting games are certainly lacking. Dungeon Raid was a neat remix of assets from the main story with a sort of rogue-like element where in between each level the player picks upgrades to their character.

Unsighted is objectively a good game, with its quality art, clever level design, and satisfying combat. I think a lot of people will really enjoy what Studio Pixel Punk and Humble Games have brought us, especially those people that enjoy games where the exploration is sneaky and cunning with its path and reward placement. I’m really looking forward to returning to Unsighted on Easy or the exploration mode to get a fuller look at what Arcadia has to offer – apparently there’s even fishing!

I totally recommend UNSIGHTED, especially for those who consider themselves skilled in games with this sort of combat.

Sam writes about all sorts of indie games for his Steam Curator page, IndieSamAdonisReviews. Follow for adventures, narrative exploration, VR coolstuff, and all sorts of indie game tomfoolery.

Based on Charles Dickens’ ‘Christmas Carol’, Chained a Victorian Nightmare puts us in the fuzzy slippers of ol’ Scrooge himself for this medium length VR movie-experience. Like many of the other VR movie-experiences that have been popping up over the years, it’s easiest to describe the format as being present in the experience from a fixed point of view, like that of a main character.

I found this VR Experience particularly enjoyable because it toed the line over what was too creepy rather well. That said, interested players shouldn’t expect a traditional telling of the classic story. What you get here is a Horror remix of the story, which I suppose makes sense given the title of the game.

I really appreciated the visuals of the game, the ghosts all looked so dang cool! But the sound design was really cringey, especially for the Future Ghost. One last thing – I don’t remember if the word ‘Christmas’ was mentioned at all in this game. Still, I enjoyed it. Recommended from me.

This experience was about 15 minutes long, and in it we got to do a bunch of typical Doctor Who tomfoolery - from playing with the sonic screwdriver, to flying the TARDIS! And naturally there are some rude aliens trying to ruin the fun.

The Runaway is much more family friendly than that other Doctor Who VR game, and a MUCH simpler experience for people new to VR. I really enjoyed hearing Jodie Whitaker's voice acting in this - I really hope BBC decides to make more VR games or experiences for Doctor Who and whatever other franchises they own.

Follow the IndieSamAdonis curator group for under-appreciated narratives, cool VR experiences, and fun adventure games.