Recent reviews by Holysword

Welcome to... well "the Island", another location in The Forest franchise that, well, for <insert reason> is cannibal-infested and mutant-ridden as well!

After a helicopter accident, you are left stranded in this "paradise". This time you aren't alone though: Kelvin, one of your crew members, survived with some serious brain damage. He will follow simple commands an help you building/maintaining a base.

I absolutely loved The Forest, but Sons of the Forest blows it out of the water. The building system was MAJORLY improved, graphics are in another level. Mutants and caves are WAY CREEPIER. The sounds, ambience, lightining were all improved and crawling a cave for the first time gave me chills the whole time. And Kelvin's brain damage... bots are usually dumb, but Kelvin is supposed to be! That was pure genius. The behaviour of the Cannibals is awesome too: they can be intimidated, scared, might run away, or plead for mercy. There is a tribe system, they even mourn or avenge dead friends. The story telling style from the first game was kept, but there are some cutscenes (loved the last one). Expect more characters though! Small spoiler: the story is literally a continuation of The Forest!

As a downside, some of the building resources are underutilized. The game gets easy rather quickly, there is no scarcity of anything and you don't *-need-* to build a base (though... why wouldn't you?!?!). Performance-wise it is lacking some optimization (lots of stuttering on my Laptop RTX 4070). The game is constantly being patched and improved though.

Worked on Linux via Proton with the aforementioned stuttering. Achievements were all great and fun except for "I Like Blisters". WTF was that?

SotF is a rich game, full of new ideas, interesting AI behaviour, beautiful scenery, great horror, good story, fun building... Endnight Games, please, feel kissed by this bearded nerd. Keep doing this, we need more game devs like you guys!

A chill but surprisingly difficult puzzle game, your goal is to navigate through each stage to collect all White Pearls whilst avoiding the spikes. The catch is that Bubbly McBubble only stops moving in one direction once he hits an obstacle. Not THAT easy now, eh? The game introduces some mechanics as you progress, making the game more dynamic and defying. You are also challenged to complete each stage in the minimal amount of moves, and to find a secret gem in each level.

Talking about levels: there are 96 stages, +4 tutorial and +4 secret ones. Great puzzle specially for this price!

Worked flawlessly on Proton (thanks Valve!) and all achievements were fine and natural.

A dying dwarf leaves the promise of great rewards from his King, should you find the missing pieces of the Hammer of Stonebridge, spread around the Darkwood Forest. Will you be able to retrieve the artifact and return it to their rightful owners?

Lol. No, you probably won't. Dis Fighting Fantasy, here m'lad! You can hardly get it right in your first read. That's where the fun is though: you try to visualize, draw the map, optimize the path and scratch your head "why the hell is there a Jar of Acid in that alcove, it is not used anywhere!!"

Fun like only the old times can be.

Linux port was flawless, thanks for supporting the penguin! Achievements were nice and all worked fine.

I could probably buy this game 100 times over with the amount of credits I lost in it during my childhood. Now my time to avenge all of those "Game Over" screens has come!!

I must admit that I am blind by nostalgia when it comes to this game. It has only 6 missions and it feels quite short (if you're not hunting achievements) specially in the lower difficulties. However, there is a high replayability value, specially if you have alcoholic friends to invite over. Either way, the game is so cheap that it might be worthy nevertheless.

No Linux port, but worked via Proton. The achievements are right on spot too.

Strangely satisfying, 112 Operator is a game that puts you in control of the firefighters, paramedics and law enforcement of a city of your choice.

You are in charge of managing vehicles, gear and facilities and hiring staff for your emergency services. There is a LOT of variety. You can create Equipment Sets and assign them to each individual worker. Your task is to dispatch the units you have to the several emergencies popping up on the map. Depending on the difficulty settings you'll have troubles attending to all of them in time, so the game can be quite stressful! The coolest feature is that the game automatically detects where you are and automatically generates a map for your city! You can also choose cities throughout the world, though. You also have scenarios and a campaign. All game modes are fun and have their own flair.

The biggest downside is that sometimes you'll be forced to pick up a 112 call and conduct a conversation with the caller. At the beginning they are interesting, but this feature gets old very quickly. I wish you could disable that.

Achievements are great with one exception: "Somewhere in the north" is VERY random and luck-based. The other scenarios are fun, some are hard, but that's part of achievement hunting. No Linux port but worked without a hiccup on Proton (thanks Valve!)

A psychological horror that has no right to be free, Doki Doki Literature Club drips with the passion and originality of the developers.

The game gives you no spoiler of its own true nature until you are in too deep. Apart from the game tags and a bit warning in the intro, there are very few hints that the game is not a cutesy moemoe VN. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I'll just recommend the game and shut up.

The art is magnificent. No achievements, works flawlesly on Linux (Renpy engine). There is a paid version of this game with some extra features, including achievements:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388880/Doki_Doki_Literature_Club_Plus/
Consider getting it just to thank the devs ;)

Alice: Madness Returns is the sequel to the... acclaimed (?) American McGee's Alice game from 2000. In the first game, the main idea is great: after suffering from some serious trauma in real life, Alice's Wonderland gets twisted and macabre, mixing horror with fantasy in a surreal manner. Cheschire cat summons Alice there to help find the culprit and restore Wonderland to... whatever Wonderland is supposed to be.

However, American McGee's Alice doesn't present a minimally coherent story, balanced gameplay nor interesting combat. If the art was once good (was it?), it definitely did not age well. The dialogues are entertaining, sometimes. This game was... odd at best? Who the hell is American McGee? Didn't he have a better name for his game?

Alice Madness Returns is the completely disconnected continuation to AMGA. Really. Good grief because AMR is actually a GREAT GAME! Alice meets Cheshire cat once again while struggling with forgetting inconvenient memories of her past driving her into a completely new adventure. This time, however, the story makes some sense! The game is filled with (hidden) collectibles and puzzles that enrich the experience. The scenery is BEAUTIFUL even though this game is over 10 years old. Some of the combat controls are frustrating (specially target locking feature) but otherwise the combos and weapon variety (2 melee, 2 ranged) are satisfying enough.

I REALLY enjoyed playing AMR with its fantastic and somber twists. The plot is interesting with good enough twists, the game mechanics are challenging, exploring Wonderland is as strange as it should be. It is a guaranteed unique experience, if you're into unusual and somewhat bizarre atmostphere. Definitely recommended!

Worked flawlessly on Linux via Steam Proton (thanks Valve!!!) even in 4K. No achievements, sadly! Alice Madness Returns is however one of my favourites adventures starting now! Skip AMGA part though. But if you insist, there is a trick to enable it by modifying a couple of files, or you can simply download it from some abandonware website.

Valheim is an open world survival game based on norse mythology so full of pros and cons that it feels that it is being developed by a bipolar emu.

Starting with the good, the weather elements and some of the crafting is awesome. You can sail and the world is huge, with maaaaaany islands to explore. The leveling system is good as well.

The killing blows: combat is dull and unrewarding. Monsters are a repetitive nuisance, don't give interesting drops, comes in small numbers but very often and just hinder your exploration without adding anything. The world is huge, but too huge. Teleportation is unlocked at some point but it is very limited. Your carrying capacity is limited too so you'll have to return home often. Extracting and carring ores is even worse, they can't be teleported and the cart to carry them is a bad joke.

The world generation is poor: after leaving the initial island you may land somewhere way higher level by accident; you die, lose your ship and equipment and have to basically start all over again. I had to google what was the next material I need to continue the game, it was Iron. I looked the game's wiki and spent over 40h (I played offline a lot, I probably have 100h in total) looking for it, without success. I managed to defeat higher level enemies with lots of efforts, and get higher materials - but no iron, hence I cannot progress the game. I created multiple worlds, and at some point even started using cheats to teleport around - I still haven't seen a single Sunken Crypt. I am giving up.

Worked flawlessly on Linux. No achievements (yet?).

The devs need to tune down this game, massively. I am not a casual gamer, but I am not willing to invest 900h in a game with such a slow/uneven progress.

Cute and addictive, Dinkum is a Life Sim game where you collect resources to grow up your farm and animals in a mostly peaceful World.

The biggest plus is the amount of different things to do: mining, hunting, fishing, finding treasures, exploring underground mines, building the houses and town, animal husbandry and NPCs quests and errands.

But... somehow it gets easily repetitive! You need energy to complete tasks and you need food to replenish this energy, but at midnight, energy stalls and your character gets chronically slow. That makes the days quite short. Crop seeds are ridiculously expensive as well and the return vs effort curve is reeeeeeally steep and I found it super difficult to level it up. Maybe the game was designed to be played in multiplayer and still needs some tweaking and balancing for single player?

It is already in a fine state, with some adjustments this will be a great game. Worked perfectly fine on Linux via Steam Proton. No achievements (yet?)

I decided to commit an attrocity and write this review comparing this classic with Cities Skyline instead of the other way around. I just want to trigger everybody. Let's see if this will work.

The first downside of Simcity 4 is that, unlike its noble competitor C:S, it is purely isometric: you can turn your camera 90° but that's it. Point to C:S.

In this one you can zone your commercial/industrial/residential areas at will and the game will optimize roads within the zone. Wait... point for SC4 O.o"

Well, if we compare the variety of roads, CS wins for sure. But SC4 has way more types of zoning. Draw.

Also, SC4 allows you to go control specific cars and go out on MISSIONS! Point for SC4 again!
SC4 also has Mayors, trying to advise you how to improve your city... plus the graphics and statistics of your city are way more meaningful than what C:S shows you.

Apart from graphics, SC4 aged super well. If you liked C:S you will probably like this one as well. No achievements, but also, no DLCs. Gah, take my thumbs up already!

PS: worked flawlessly on Linux via Proton!