While sometimes games have terrible stories and art that might weird you out, it’s only in extreme cases that I will be prevented from playing a game because of these things. LTAP is a fine RPG - with a few issues here and there - that maybe would’ve fared better with different graphics and tone.
Threes is simple fun, it’s an addictive little puzzle game and while it’s distilled to the core of it’s gameplay concepts - almost to a bare-bones extreme - its simplicity allows for a fun five minutes here and there of moving tiles around.
There rarely are games where you control obviously French Canadian lumberjacks fighting werewolves, especially with tower defence elements thrown in there for good measure. Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves has a neat concept and some interesting elements surrounding the core gameplay, but the act of actually playing it feels clunky and not very fun, so I couldn’t get very far into it.
As far as iOS platformers go, SpellSword is fine, you pick up cards that enchant your weapon with various spells while killing monsters, looting rupees and completing missions, between them, you upgrade your character and buy more gear. It’s fine, but it would be better on something with actual controls.
I usually try and look at videogames to see their flaws and how I would improve upon them if I myself would have made that same product with all the time and money I would need. Or indeed, having the source code, knowledge of how everything works and all the time in the world to tinker with it. There’s too much of that to be done with Iesabel, it’s a broken mess.
I would love to make an action RPG like this one could be, the classic hp/mana game, maybe with a twist or two. Iesabel has close to no redeeming qualities - much like baby geniuses - besides that it’s a shipped product that you could play if you wanted to. That’s more than much of what I’ve ever done, small personal projects with no outreach nor fans. In any case, all the menus and voice acting in this game are terrible and badly translated.
The gameplay was also pretty bad, difficulty to aim, even basic controls were confusing, enemies killed me way too fast for no reason, menus are assigned to weird hotkeys, stats and skills are poorly explained to irrelevancy, I couldn’t figure what my stamina was, nor why my character was a naked person getting murdered by mosquitoes. Or that giant wooden door in the middle of nowhere, or just the basic movement that didn’t work.
I suppose that showing exactly what stats do is a neat idea, maybe adding a small arrow with the ‘before’ and ‘after’ value would help this particular system work a bit better, but that would be like adding a bandaid on someone cut in half. I think this game is also an Android phone game, working with a touchscreen, it must also be terrible there.
Anyways, I love Action RPGs and I always want to try different ones, but this one… Nah, don’t play Iesabel, even I couldn’t fix it. (Also, what do the orbs in the skill tab mean? I think they represent stats required, why not just name them out?)
Castle DoomBad is a tower defense game where heroes infiltrate your towers via the main door and windows to try and rescue a princess to bring her out of the building. Your job is to build traps and summon minions to kill the heroes before they reach her glass cage. Yes, there are two currencies and one is more premium than the other one, but I never even felt the specter of microtransactions ruin my fun.
Puzzle Quest Galactrix is a sad puzzle videogame in the line of other great Puzzle Quests. It’s core gameplay is perfectly fine, mind you, but it is ruined by abysmal controls between fights and poorly designed UIs and quests. I enjoyed my time solving puzzles and fighting, but everything between that was painfully boring.
Quest Lord is an old school RPG where you move in a 3d environment in first person. It’s very confusing and quirky and I lost attention pretty fast after not being sure where to go, fumbling around with a weird UI and not being sure if certain features of the game were bugs or just weird things.
I quite enjoyed PAA:ORSPD episode 3, made by the guys that did Breath of Death and Chtulu saves the world, it was a neat little turn-based RPG with some active time battle elements and some humour. At the end of the day I blasted through it, a bit confused by the plot but quite enamoured by the job system. What about this episode 4? It’s not as good, sadly.
Even with such a name, The “Amazing” Alex isn’t an amazing game. Maybe clever at first, coalescing thoughts about The Amazing Machine of old, but soon a sour disappointment with puzzles based on luck and gratuitous trial-and-error with a broken interface and lack of depth will replace any fondness you might hold for the game.
I have no nostalgia for the old NES game of the same name, but Ducktales Remastered embodies the two side of videogames, old and new, in a compelling package that was an amazing blast to play through, I would recommend it if you enjoy platformers or nostalgia or just like ducks.
I was a bit skeptical when I saw trials on the iOS store, after all, games ported from consoles are either barely resembling their counterparts or control really badly when developers try to figure out a way to make the game work at all. Trials Frontier avoids these two things, but falls down in the free to play hole pretty quickly. It’s still a fun experience for a while, controlling well and adapted to touch controls. I even thought the systems it added (leveling, loot, upgrading your bike) were better than the bare-bones progression of the PC/Console game.
Yet another port of a console game, Trials works pretty well on the PC. It’s a bit awkward at first to use a random key as the thrust button and then use the arrow keys to tilt the bike, but after a while I got as good with it than I did with the console version.It still has the same issues, but it’s still a blast if you like that almost puzzle-ish arcade feel.
The Room 2 is the sequel to another puzzle game of the same title where you solve gigantic mechanical puzzles by sliding, opening, poking, turning, finding and placing objects on a fantastical device only to peel layers upon layers of additional puzzles hidden inside the first ones. It’s a pretty good game, but not as good as the original.
Guacamelee is an interesting metroidvania with a world-switching mechanic and a large swath of memes sprinkled around. I quite enjoyed it, even if it continued (with Vadis Story last week) a trend of PC games almost requiring controllers to play ‘properly’. After progressing through almost all the game, I was stopped by one fight that frustrated me to no end.
I don't know if there was something I was doing wrong with Fiz when I played it but the game didn't explain much to me. Although I had a poor time with it, Fiz is well done, devoid of microtransactions with a bunch of systems to exploit and some sense of discovery and a ton of content, I thought at first that I would play through the whole thing, but got annoyed after a short while and stopped.
It has been a while since I played a metroidvania and Valdis Story: Abyssal City didn't disappoint me for the largest part of the game. It's an amazing game with skills and equipment, and interesting alignment system, crafting recipes, challenging bosses and some nefarious platforming puzzles. I really wish I could've beat it.
Containment: The Zombie Puzzler is a little action-puzzle game where you have to swap differently suited citizens around zombies to kill them. Instead of matching 3, you have to box them in, and then the zombies die and new citizens march in and you get power-up sometimes. I can't say it grabbed me.
This is my last review for this year, and what a game it is! Well, Gone Home is barely a game, but it's an amazing experience. A bit like The Stanley Parable, it's quite difficult for me to have a look upon the gameplay concepts in it and not spoil anything. Playing Gone Home is like reading a good book.
Starborn Anarkist is a little dual-stick shooter where you complete challenges and defeat tons of enemies/bosses to unlock new gear to make your ship designs stronger to keep doing the same thing. You upgrade temporarily your offence/defence/speed during play sessions in some weird way.