Recent reviews by Venseer

Like all survival games, its easy when you know how to do certain stuff, but its fun to master, there are not different stages to see, but the codec-call dialogue keeps it fresh to a point. The bullet-hell and bossing is a nice addition to the genre that feels natural. The unique design, to put it politely, is interesting to look at but it won't be many people's jam. Falls on some pitfalls of the genre, but improves in a lot of other points too. More than one ending, some secrets and a unique, albeit not always great, look, its a fun time. I'll probably be 100% the game eventually.

More in depth review below

Picayune Dreams is a mixture of the Survivor genre and Bullet Hell, the game is split in three parts, the survival part which you basically have to survive until you reach a specific number of kills, enemies vary from dumb walk-towards-you-in-a-straight-line to enemies with more complex movement patterns, or enrage-enemies that will dart at you after the first hit.

If you played vampire survivors you know the drill, the objective of this part is to make an AFK build so you can stand still while the screen melts. It made enough improvements over the formula that I think are worth praising, speeding up the game with a key, choosing the enemy types, stage hazards and shrines that appear before starting the stage, manual and auto-aiming. It still falls on some pitfalls as many items are worthless compared to the overall roster of items, balancing issues to enemies you'll never want to encounter, such as the snipers, but overall the game is really easy.

The second part is the bossing part, which comes the bullet-hell aspect. As a bullet hell, all patterns are incredibly easy, so you don't need a lot of practice to start doing perfects, there is only one boss which is a secret boss that proves slightly more difficult. You can loop back to bosses in the same run and they get more HP and more moves if you want to challenge yourself.

The third part is an RPG-Maker like style game which you unravel the story of the game alongside the codec-calls you have with bosses. It's fun, the story is nothing superb, and if you can look past the sort-of corny look of some stuff, and some of the obvious writing, it's not bad. The writing goes from fun interactions with bosses to some more heavy-handed commentary and melodramatic absurd dialogue. The writing, even if not superb, adds some personality and flair that in my opinion makes it shine a little bit more. With some more care and work on the writing, re-designing some dialogue and toning down the design of 'that face' could've been much better but its good as it is.

It falls on some pitfalls. You can't store level-ups so if you are doing well, your game will constantly be paused, there is an option to auto-level, but most of the balancing of this game is not great so I wouldn't recommend it. Slight frustrations with RNG such as your favorite starter-weapon not showing up, or being unable to encounter a special boss because you can't spawn a healing item may happen, but its never run breaking unless you are trying something really, really specific.

TLDR; See last paragraph.

Moonbreaker is a turn based, one-versus-one, strategy digital board game. The flow of combat is simple, each unit has unique stats and skills, and you must use these to win victory points in a tug-of-war style score system, first to five, by either capturing and holding control zones or destroying enemy units. You start with your commander on the board and you can deploy and control simultaneously up six out of the ten other units you bring in your team. Each turn you are granted a specific number of deployment points which you use to put your units down.

While every unit is granted one free movement and one free attack (if it has the capability to attack), they can also use skill points by spending the common shared pool resource named Cinder. At the time of this review, there are currently 59 units and 5 commanders. There are no 'fodder units' meaning each unit is unique, either by cost, stats, keywords, abilities or usable skills. There are also no pure-stat no-effect units either. Creating combos is the essence of this game, most units can not perform solo, others are better to be alone.

The average game time is of about ten to fifteen minutes depending on how fast both players do their turns. There are ways to practice versus AI and a unique mode called Cargo Run, which you are granted a smaller team of five units and one captain, which you have to progress in five battles, keeping damaged health, found crew and buffs between battles.

Being inspired by board-games, this game comes with a model-painter mode, which you can create unique recolors to your units and captains, as of the time of this review you can not share those, but I would love to see a way to load other recolors people make for units.

What I would like to see next: Different game modes, tug-of-war for victory points is fine, but there is a lot of potential to do much more, two-versus-two, bigger maps or even dynamic maps, elimination game mode, or objective-based game modes. More units and captains would always be a plus too.

The current, and biggest negative point of this game is the playerbase, or rather the lack of one. It currently hovers from 5 to 30 players daily. It is a niche game, which desperately needs marketing, I remember seeing the reveal of its existance on a show once and I only found it had released as early access a while back. Of course, marketing costs money and I'd rather see the game evolve mechanically and get new features.

Everything gameplay wise is free out of the box, there are no units or captains you need to buy with real money, or game-currency, but there are some cosmetics stuck behind a 'play-pass' sort of thing which you gain EXP playing matches, what is unlocked behind it that people might care about is extra colors for the model painting mode and a unique skin for a captain, while I'm normally neutral to play-passes that lock me off of stuff like this, this one is for 'Early Access' period only, so I don't know if it will just go away one day and whoever missed it won't be able to get the rewards again, I certainly hope not.

As far as digital boardgames go, this if my favorite one and probably the one that has the most potentital to evolve too. The fact that everything gameplay wise is just unlocked as soon as you buy the game is also refreshing for a digital boardgame (looking at you Bloodbowl 3). I can't recommend it enough but you should know of the lack of playerbase problem, there are skirmish against AI and the previously described Cargo Run mode which you play single player too, but if you just want exclusively to test your wits against another living player, you won't be able to find matches any time you want.

Banger soundtrack and a short but sweet experience.
Just be careful on the last stage.

Void Stranger is a puzzle game in which you move in a grid based system, can pick up floor-tiles and put them down in front of you to clear gaps so you can move forward. You can also push stuff around which is great too!

I actually would write a way more detailed review but I wouldn't like to spoil anything.

Surprisingly fun game, got it on a whim when someone recommended to me on a forum and had a blast with it.

Actually a pretty good digital version of my favorite board game. The UI Needs some polishing as it contains some pretty basic flaws, but it plays smooth. Due to the incredible niche and loyal fanbase, if you decide to play this, your ass is going to get kicked until you learn the game mechanics.

You'll also have to memorize the cards due to the poor placement on your hand and no ability to actually see your opponent's hand without covering 40% of your screen. I had a easier time using the little physical reference sheet I have for the physical game, so if you're really into this game a excel sheet on a second monitor might improve your game until they sort out the UI.

It uses the flawed Free-to-Play Model of League of Legends which does not work very well for this game, consider it a demo. The price of the characters seem a bit steep currently but its not much, I really wish there was a option to purchase every character and upcoming characters.

The art on portraits is gorgeous, as it is the same of the board game, but the cards received their own renditions due to not having one on the board game, their quality range from good, to ok, to questionable.

I may sound displeased but I actually really enjoyed this rendition of the game and I really hope they can iron out the problems, I give it a recommendation. It's not for everyone, but, doesn't hurt to try and you might like it. BattleCON is pure mind-game, opponent reading delight and one of the best board games around.

Also, the music in this game is terrific and to whoever made it, good job. I'd buy that OST in a heartbeat.

Edit: Game is abandoned by the devs. I'll leave my old review up but I'll change it to a not recommend, sadly they couldn't find an audience.

J U B E I
U
B
E
I