Recent reviews by Shloomth

Insomniac have done it again. The core is the vibe and the vibe is real. The sound design is spot on and the mechanical aesthetic is there. Being in early access it is of course still rough aesthetically and with some gameplay bugs like with loading saves. All very fixable and I am willing to be patient for another one of their endless mechanical timesinks.

very intricate and engaging mechanism building simulator that gives you every part at the beginning and lets you discover your own build style. The most obvious solution usually starts with a pilotable vehicle but that's not the only way to go about it. it encourages creativity in problem solving

a fun logical little crossover that does right by both of its component parts

There is a lot of really good stuff here. The core mechanic is inherently fun to play with, and the devs knew exactly how to build interest and familiarity with what it's capable of. The story is contemplative and comfortable taking a back seat, and you're given more than one companion character, so if you don't like the first one, don't worry. The level aesthetic changes with each area, and they're all beautiful in their own ways. There are chairs all around that you can press E to sit in, and the view from these chairs is clearly deliberately crafted as a piece of art in themselves. The amount of care and attention that went into this game is evident. And it's a game about art in the most "game about art" way that i've seen, that fully retains the "game" within the art. It resists the temptation to become a full-on "walking simulator" (which, i don't have a problem with those, but if you do, you will still enjoy this.)
If you enjoyed Portal and Superliminal, you will probably love this too

my all-time favorite indie studio made my favorite type of logic puzzle game. Surprise surprise, i completely love it. Tomorrow Corporation's clever writing fits into the programming logic puzzle theme like butter on bread. At first I was like "what? World of Goo > Little Inferno > Human Resource Machine??" I still think little inferno was the strangest and most interesting link in the chain. Their other games are puzzlers but Little Inferno was more of an art game. But each of their games is certainly meant to invoke a particular feeling, and the ways this game makes me feel is like a software engineer.

A true puzzle game

A tour-de-force of procedural generation. The levels are incredible and the enemies...come to think of it, this puts me in mind of Left 4 Dead, the way the enemies are sort of always there to a certain degree, but then come in swarms, either on an interval or triggered by an event. The co-op design is fun and the 'salute' key is graced with a huge array of voice lines that can play, to create a sense of camaraderie and fun. There's a system for pointing at objects that gives your teammates a ping on their hud, which is extremely helpful for coop with internet strangers. Speaking of which, the vast vast majority of my experiences with people in this game have been very positive. There is a sense of a welcoming community.

This is a beautiful example of a game that needed VR to exist. Something like this just wouldn't work with a controller or keyboard. It is not perfect, it has quirks, but the core gameplay is very unique and fun.
There was one thing that almost ruins this game for me personaly: the little keycard things you use to unlock new rooms, the way they're hidden throughout the environment and required to progress is such an achilles heel for me mostly because i'm partly blind but mostly because i didn't come here to explore this place i came for time-clone cooperation-based automation! In tandem with that, i'm not a huge fan of how this game structures its progression. I was hoping for more of a Zachtronics flow where you're given a clear problem to solve, and the tools to solve it, and when you solve that problem you're given a new one. Sometimes this is what we get and these are the most fun parts in my opinion. The less-fun parts are the object-hunt segments and, i'm sorry, the story is incredibly one-note so far. I never did read much of the stories in Zachtronics games either. I don't feel like these types of games benefit from having a bunch of backstory and lore. But that's just me.
Overall I am invested in how the gameplay evolves and having a lot of fun with the robots / clones. Good purchase.

my gf and I are already very close but this game has still served as a bonding experience for us. the visceral feeling of supporting each other when we were flipping the switches for the vacuum air tubes was awesome. the occasional versus challenges encourage us to see each other in various lights as actual people. its good co-op platforming you can do with anyone but you'll probably end up at least friends

It took me a long time to really get this game and i'm so glad i stuck with it. I wasn't sure what it was that kept drawing me back. Partly the aesthetic, partly i think the random element is like a void that calls to me. I've always liked the idea of a card game but when i try to get into them they're too complicated and hard to actually strategize within. This one streamlines and simplifies things to a point that makes the cards easier to conceptualize, and then the game practically lets you break it in small controlled ways to make it not only fair, but unfair in your advantage...until it's not. I also like how there seem to be cards that i have that the other guy doesn't, and we play by slightly different rules (you can see his cards one turn before he spawns them in, but he doesn't have to sacrifice squirrels)
There were some specific small problems i had in the first hour or two. For starters, spoilers, i thought the 7 was a / so it took me forever to get the stink bug and i was getting pissed at the sloat for constantly badgering me about the thing when there was only one bit of the combination available to me even as i was paging through the book...and without giving too much away, after i found the other stuff in the room i felt pretty stupid but in a good way because now things are really moving.
I can still only play in bursts because of my vision. in terms of accessibility for me specifically this game gets a 3/5. +you can change the dialogue scroll speed and manually advance other dialogue, +easily recognizable sigils, +characters have different voices, -bad font, -hard-to-decipher map icons, -the woodcarving animal heads can be hard to tell apart.
overall good game really glad i got it and decided not to refund it.