Recent reviews by E.M.J. ㋛

Oh WOW! From seeing someone play the demo and playing through the whole game myself it turned out to be so much more than I'd expected. Apart from me misunderstanding a puzzle and wasting alot of time on that (counting things of certain colors is not part of any puzzle in this game fyi, should your brain be wired the same way as mine...) it was GREAT!

Despite losing a bit of momentum by the end and going somewhat off the rails, this is a step up from Born into Fear, which was also great fun to me. The devs are super interesting, truly imaginative and dedicated to their craft, going so far as to create their own mythos with the Buffers. Whether you buy into it or not, it surely isn't the same old rehash of things others have done better before. Also, I LOVE the often off beat humour in their works. If they took themselves too serious it wouldn't work like it does.

I almost got addicted to this game (being addicted to a game is NOT a positive in my book fyi, but almost is a compliment).

Fun concept, sweet artwork, and mostly good if a bit overly positive voice acting (like in postive toxicity, if I had friends like these I would be ignored if I had a bad day, lol). Anyone who says something is easy for example, I'd counter with "how tf would you kow what is easy for someone else?" Perhaps I find it hard to get my mail out of the mail box, you ____...

The positives include the main mechanics, the way the flowers bloom is incredibly beautiful, planting, tending, collecting, achieving new seeds (even if the randomization factor might be a bit frustrating) and delivering requests is very satisfying. Petting cats is also a huge plus, obviously, as well as being able to decorate and shape your garden the way you want (within the frames set by the games design). I also appreciate things like if you keep some weeds around they will decrease pests, but also use up water in the ground from your planted plats. Same with how different plants thrive more or less in different conditions.

The negatives include the limit on plants you can plant in the garden. You will have space enough around even when it's capped making it seem a bit empty most likely, depending on the plants size I assume. I think players would be okay w toning down the visual quality in order to have more flowers and fill up every area. It's also a bit weird how plants outdoors aren't affected by winter, even though I appreciate it. I would have guessed you needed to choose a precious few to put in the greenhouse in order for them to survive winter, which would have been more logical. I don't see much point of the greenhouse though, since I have trouble getting some things to flower in there even though everything is automated in there, apparently. Same with the soil bags you can buy. I haven't found out any benefit of them. Overall it is lacking somewhat in the descriptive and explaining department. Also some achievemements are buggy, they will pop for some players and not for others, if that is of importance to you.

Apart from that, and as a whole, I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Charming!

Loved it! Some have mistakenly tagged this as walking sim which is incorrect. Depending on chapter it has some puzzles, a patrolling enemy which to sneak past while looking for keys or codes, and a short section where you are armed with a gun.
However, had a bug where the keyboard stopped responding. Never happened to me before in a game.

Overall, great looking, great sounding, quick loading time, serviceable voice acting. Story and scenarious are silly though and also, even if you're a young and new security guard, why the f would you not report finding, for example, all phones off the hook, and lit candles around the place? Speaking of some of which are placed inside of cabinets made of wood, that school would have burned down by now.

Also you climb a ladder marked as “equipment” or something but end up traversing ontop of vents (which also aren't designed to hold a full grown humans body weight), lol, wtf was that about, who designed this school? Also, you decide to go into armed combat w a dangerous person rather than move the table and chairs blocking the exit? Highly unlikely. There are many instances like these, but the game often acknowledge the absurdity of things to its credit.

It does have some great moments and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it, if you just shut your brain off. The dev has developed (pun intended) their games far beyond The Swine by this point and it's great to see the evolution.

Really fun and charming, bursting with great nods to classic slashers all over the place in superb pixel art form. The music gets a little bit repetetive for my taste though, and there's a significant difficulty spike by the final chapter. I'm still struggling with it. I'm not a huge fan of the placement of the save points, especially considering how tough some of the later fights are, and the fact the collected inventory items such as med kits vanishes by chapter progression was a frustrating realisation. It's a great game though full of love for the genre.

I've played 3 entries of this series so far, and they all have been extremely well made point and click psychological horror. This one though, wow, hit close to home for me personally on many levels. I am deeply impressed w the intelligent writing, as well as the art style and cinematic editing and tempo. Superb. I'll be keeping an eye on this dev.

It's very good for the genre but it's not revolutionary like some reviews would have you believe. It's a good HOG, but not something that would impress non fans or general gamers.

Broken. Got until I was supposed to play a tape in a recorder. The option to do so never appeared. Restarted, and then even the option to unlock the main door didn't appear (a segement I had passed in the first attempt, and did everything exactly the same). Extremely unstable and poorly made apparently. Also the VHS filter is a bit too much for my taste, and there is no option to turn it off. Seemed like a neat idea and style otherwise, and I enjoy bite sized games inbetween bigger commitments.

Absolutely masterful.