Recent reviews by Azune

Good value for asking price if you like logic puzzles.

The idea is to deduce which chests are mimics based on what each of them tells you and open the rest for treasure: gold, gear and items. You need those to overcome enemy encounters between floors and final boss of the dungeon, so it's imperative to open as many chests as possible. Opening them also awards experience points to level up your character's stats.

Initially you can select 3 game modes: regular, expert and random with a varying number of mimics. After you complete these at least once additional modes unlock to a total of 7 and each of them in turn has different levels of difficulty. Levels 1 - 4 have 30 dungeon floors and levels from 5 onward have 50.

As a general rule the mimics lie and other chests tell the truth, but different modes can change that. Each brings something new into play. Like not knowing exact number of mimics but only a range, for example 1 - 3. Or robbers which hide in chests and make finding mimics more difficult because some chests now talk about robbers instead, giving you less information about mimics. Or mode with numbers above chests indicating how many adjacent chests are mimics and you need to figure the correct pattern. Or mode with confused chests which lie but aren't mimics. Or mode where mimics tell the truth but normal chests of the same color lie. Some chests may be asleep or talk about different things, like what treasure type they contain, or count down the time you have to leave the floor (specific floors only, generally you have as much time as your gut stat allows).

You get the picture... you're bound to find something you like, at level that offers adequate challenge.

Most floors of each dungeon are floors with chests that come in groups of 6, 7 or 9 (the picture with 4 on game page is only the very first floor of tutorial). Some floors are combat encounters and some are settlements with a shop and an inn. Combat is barebones, step next to an enemy and click to exchange hits. It's merely incentivizing opening most chests, more so on higher levels.

RPG elements are likewise minimalistic, just attack and defense, HP and gut. Gut is hunger, if it reaches zero you die. It's there to make you feel slight time pressure when solving the puzzles and strategize a bit when needed since you don't really have to open any chests to proceed to the next floor.

Randomization ensures lasting appeal and although it does make some puzzles trivial, others can get pleasantly tricky. I'd say it's suitable for children to have some brain exercising fun too.

Highly entertaining compact arcade in the vein of acclaimed classics.

Each stage has a number of donuts scattered across the level and for best score combos you need to gather them in randomized sequence. After you pick the first one, the next that should be picked starts flashing. Simple and effective.

Enemies have linear movement except for one that chases you. Individual stages play differently enough not to feel repetitive. Higher difficulties introduce a new enemy type and increase the speed and overall number of enemies to make things more frantic. No deaths felt unfair, which is a testament to good design.

Gameplay loop consists of 5 single-screen stages, across 3 difficulties split into 2 main modes spanning 2 rounds or 10 stages each, Easy-Medium and Medium-Hard with a nice bonus stage in between having you bounce the baker on a giant pumpkin. There are global leaderboards, speedrun and daily challenges for lasting appeal.

Chiptune soundtrack is catchy, controls are tight, visuals endearing, and ending made me smile, remembering days when winning in arcades awarded you a generic one-liner in broken English. Good times.

If I had to put one game on everyone's list of games to play, that game would be Vane.

It isn't so much a game as it is an experience, with narration that leaves everything to your interpretation, because the game uses no words in unfolding of story it tells. It is purely audiovisual.

When Vane was released, press reviews weren't favorable. Median review score was poor. But is Vane really bad? It depends on the eyes of the beholder.

There will always be favorable and unfavorable reviews when review pool grows sufficiently large, and median should give you a general idea on how things are. Right? Sure, but here's the thing: Vane isn't a conventional game, nor does it want to be one. It's an experience that uses gaming as medium to carry across a meaningful message, which may or may not provoke you into introspection about what in my opinion is the most important dilemma concerning our lives. Considering this, I think it is beautifully done.

What I think hurts Vane the most is that it is surreal in nature, meaning that advancing the plot will sometimes require unconventional solutions, while at the same time it prefers to let you observe and think instead of providing plain guidance. Through that consideration, and surreal lens, experience gains weight and becomes more impactful. I love games that do this, but understand why some don't. Another commonly voiced criticism is that camera at times obstructs your view and controls can in certain situations feel a bit awkward. That's valid. For me, the positives outweigh this by a large margin. Like wonderfully composed and thematically fitting music that dynamically changes as you move through the world, or tasteful choice of colors and harmonious palette that make detailed polygonal surfaces appear both artistic and realistic at same time, while effective use of contrasts between sources of light and shadows elevates the scenery even more, or like interesting mechanics of dynamically reshaping world which I've never encountered before and, above all, the message.

Once all is seen and done, story shapes into a coherent whole. Or so it was for me, what you take away from Vane is left to you.

Is Vane a masterpiece? In my eyes it is.



I had deliberately excluded actual gameplay. I feel it's best going in knowing nothing about it. If what I wrote stirs your curiosity, you should by all means "play" it.

"Z is a game with soul, and if we would add or take away anything from it, we could terribly break it."

Those were the introductory words of a glowing review in a computer magazine I was subscribed to back in the day, which made me buy the game and I found those words to be true. There is no game I know of that would be like Z, if by chance you do tell me because I would like to play it.

So what is Z? It's highly involving real-time strategy that doesn't take itself too seriously. Maps are split into territories. How easily accessible, defensible and strategically important each is depends on the layout of the land and the position of the flag which your troops need to capture for ownership of the territory. Some of them have factories, only spots besides HQ that can produce new units: troops, stationary guns and/or vehicles. Not all factories produce same types of units and, like units themselves, can be relatively scarce. Having more territories under your control means faster production, there is a timer ticking above factory doors indicating how long until the next unit comes out.

What makes it so involving are frequent multiple hotspots where the action happens and that each gun and vehicle is under your control only as long as your soldier is in the seat while each bullet fired his way has a chance to dispose of him. If that happens unit will become an abandoned stationary piece on the field until another soldier, yours or from opposing side, climbs in to reclaim it. Takeovers make skirmishes less predictable and very fun. More so as infantry units, especially basic grunts, have a lot of personality and behave in line with what's happening on the field, cheering you onward or demanding that you do something already, while music dynamically changes.

Victory condition is blowing up enemy HQ on the opposite side of the map and to achieve that any one of your units needs to enter it. Not quite a walk in the park on later missions.

Hilarious cutscenes between missions featuring two grunts and commander of allied forces breath in a lot of extra charm, along with other finer details, for example, on one of the maps the two grunts from the cutscenes are enjoying their time off sunbathing on loungers and sipping cocktails... right amidst an ongoing battle.

Good memories. Original Z is one of the few big box games I've been keeping over the years.

This release, however, is a soulless port.

A port of a port in fact; original PC version was ported to mobile and the mobile version in turn back to PC, considerably changing it for the worse or downright breaking it in the process, most importantly the AI. When I reached a mission that should be difficult, it had oddly lacked the challenge in contrast to how I remember it. I've started to notice things. The AI pathfinding and logic are broken; when you see absurdities like it wasting HQ production on solely jeeps to hoard them at specific spot, not even a very strategic one, and leaving them to idle, never doing anything with them, you realize you're facing something that's no longer able to cope with fundamental mechanics of the game.

If you can, get the original by The Bitmap Brothers. Or browse the web for "The Zod Engine", a faithful fan-made remake, sadly lacking the fantastic cutscenes of the original but otherwise improved in many ways, from QoL features to the AI, which had surprised me in how good it is. And, as a cherry on the top, it's free.

The only game along with SWOS that was installed on every computer I've owned. It's amazing how, after all the sessions over the years, it can still make the hours fly by and I'm glad to see the game not only very much alive thanks to the OTTD team, but also expanded with fan made content in so many impressive ways (mod database is conveniently accessible from the main menu).

So what is it about, in case you're new to it? Generate a map, connect the towns and industries by building transportation networks, watch the tiny vehicles buzz about busily as towns prosper to cities, accompanied all the while by the mesmerizing sounds registers make when the cash flows in.

*ding* *ding* *ding*

Simple. Then you suddenly realize it's very late and you should go get some sleep.

Something to listen to while you play: ♫

A charming and well priced puzzle game that manages to hit the sweet spot of relaxing yet consistently engaging gameplay.

If I make an obvious comparison with Dorfromantik, I personally prefer Land Above Sea Below and can see myself spending more time with it in the long run, because the idea of rising sea level makes playthroughs more dynamic. The tide can flood the land if you don't keep watch over it, which can be severely penalizing.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3037158387
Each normal run (there are 3 modes: normal, endless and sandbox) consists of 10 seasons. At the start of each season after initial beginning stage, a number of land pieces, hexagonal tiles, are drawn randomly from tile pool. You can see the order in which tiles will become available, the set each belongs to and their type (regular or special), but you only have full information about shape and any unique characteristics of a topmost tile. As you progress through seasons, tile pool gradually expands to 4 different sets, making tiles more varied and consequently demanding more planning to reap the benefits of possible synergies.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3037158367
Attaching a tile to at least 3 matching neighbours will lift an entire adjacent undivided (by walls or rivers) ladmass of the same set (or of different sets if interlinking mixed land tiles connect them) by one level, while 4 (or more) matching neighbours will reward an extra tile (or two), as will fulfilling any unique challenges individual tiles may have. After each season tide raises by one level and can* flood regular tiles left just above the sea permanently (unless you counter it with a rare drought event card). You can expand next to flooded tiles, but not on top of them, and lose the benefit of any potential bonuses. Special tiles (rivers, walls and unique buildings) including directly attached pieces are unsinkable while regular tiles (land) are not.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3037158347
Placing tiles effectively gives more score points and reaching score thresholds awards event cards, which aren't in abundance, are permanent for the duration of a run and can be used at any time, once per card. They serve as RNG mitigator and can be very effective depending on how well you play them.

The amount of diversity in game pieces and cards to me feels about right. Add plenty of lovely sights and pleasant jazzy tunes into the mix, and you have a winning formula.

---

*
I tested this a number of times during my playthroughs and whether a tile meeting the criteria for flooding actually does get flooded seems to be an outcome of a random (50:50 ?) calculation, not globally but done for each individual tile. This applies to newly placed tiles only, tiles placed in previous seasons will always get flooded.

So flooding is never a definite outcome but a risk which might or might not happen, but regardless, it's a risk you never want to take.

If anybody found out that this rule works differently, please do let me know and I will amend the review.

A story of one man's life that's anything but simple, told without words, except for the titles of individual chapters. Main mechanic is manipulation of time, not of your actions but in world around you, to open new paths.

It is a wonderfully directed journey, at times deeply touching, at times strikingly beautiful, but what makes it special is reflection of man's inner emotions in appearance of outer world, and how well Piccolo Studio managed to interpret those emotions through visualization and music.

The kind of game you keep installed to come back for a session every now and then.

It's simply cool; plenty of fun whether you want to take on some of the many challenges which should take you a good while to complete if you attempt to go for all achievements, or just relax exploring the slopes of 12 reasonably expansive mountain ranges in zen mode, alone or with up to 3 buddies locally. Winning challenges is mandatory for getting access to rides and resorts, but you don't have to do all of them if you don't want to, just a few to get enough ski passes for unlocking the next thing.

Mechanically and visually skiing/boarding clicked with me really well, is very lenient and relatively easy to master, including performing a good variety of tricks when you're in the air. There is a noticeable difference the angle of the slope makes, or if the path has beaten or fresh snow, or icy patches. A total of 4 types of skis and boards are yours to choose from. Viewing angle can be rotated by 180 degrees from default frontal view and zoomed in or out; just mentioning it as it's not evident from screenshots on the game page.

Bullying other skiers gives you a speed boost! (No worries, it's optional. Mostly.)

The one thing I wish would be added is the option to disable hints as each time you take a ride on ski lifts a hint pops up briefly, in large font, on the middle of the screen, so be ready to see hint(s) you already saw appear potentially dozens of times, if like me you prefer taking a ride over fast travelling on the map. To be able to do away with them in zen mode at least would be nice, admiring the view of the mountainside bathing in the last rays of the setting sun from the gondola during its slow ascent to the top is an integral part of zen experience after all.

Which reminds me, sunsets should last longer... 😉

A lot of creativity was at work here.

The Hex is more than the sum of its mechanically simple but impressively diverse parts, and is best experienced without much prior knowledge about the game or its plot. It's a mix of acts unfolding across many game genres, and minigames, that stitch together a story both intriguing and original in how it's told.

If you're looking for something different, highly recommended.

Depths of Sanity has the DNA of a pure underwater Metroid, in a sense of how exploration works, and the longer you stick with it, the more you notice the attention that went into the finer details to flesh out the atmospere of venturing into something unknown.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2984276414
A mellow voice of a girl in your head singing a never ending lullaby when you're nearing the siren's nest. An all-encompassing darkness of the depths where the only source of information about your surroundings are the pings of the sonar. A minuscule diver navigating the narrow caverns on preciously tight supply of oxygen when circumstances force you to leave the ship.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2984276398
A lot of thoughtful touches making exploration compelling as you wonder what surprise may be waiting for you around the next corner. Many interesting upgrades for the submarine are scattered around the world, to use in combat and to access previously unreachable areas in imaginative ways.

Entire map is very large, with plenty of secrets to be found and a number of different biomes to explore. Late game will give you the ability to unlock shortcuts for fast travel across the map, and reward thorough exploration. I like the way in which the two possible endgame choices are presented, subtly at first but in time it becomes clear what needs to be done.

Creatures you encounter have mostly basic behavorial patterns, which does consequently make the combat serviceable at best, and can at times feel a bit clunky. On keyboard and mouse the controls are solid, the submarine behaves as I would expect it to underwater and moves about with thrusts.

The narrative is intriguing and, without spoiling anything, one of the strongest aspects of the game. In my experience narratives of too many modern games are bland and generic, being there for the sake of having some sort of a story rather than contributing to the atmosphere in any meaningful way, sometimes even ruining the whole thing. Depths of Sanity is the very opposite.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2984276383
And thus I've come all the way to the bottom.

Effort went into the making of this game and it shows; I do hope to see more from Bomb Shelter Games, because the team has potential to bring about great things in the future.