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One of the most subtle DLCs I've ever seen.

What the absolute ♥♥♥♥. This game is insane.

I've never seen a more horrifically offensive bundle of stereotypes of Americans. I mean, it doesn't even try to be culturally accurate or sensi... oh. Oh wait a second.

Oh ♥♥♥♥.

We have this coming, don't we?

Yeah, we deserve this. As the world takes an Eastern turn, as the rest of the world finds their voice, it's going to be time for payback on Orientalism and our exceptionalism, isn't it? Now it's our turn to be rendered in weird stereotypes that appeal to other cultures, to be fetishized in weird-ass ways.

Yeah, this is the game we deserve. I'll play it as a matter of penance.

YOU PLAY IT TOO. And I want you to think about your behavior while you do it. This is your punishment. This is the game you deserve.

Don't worry, Lucie will be there for you.


谢谢你的惩罚，善良的开发人员。 我将以恩典受苦受辱,并向露西寻求安慰

A great little RTS/artillery game that has a certain appeal for a 2D physics-based ship-and-plane action-strategy game like those the Finnish dev community has been famous for all these years. The graphics are minimalistic, but done in a really appealing way that makes it not quite feel minimalistic; it's really quite beautiful.

I played this a while ago and forgot to leave a positive review, and when I came back I noticed they are still dropping significant content updates/additions as of July 2024 — a nice surprise!

Do drop by the devs' website and read their dev blog -- it's an unexpected delight to read. In the world of random dev blog and update notes, I think they win.

Great work on this one, and glad to see it's getting the attention it deserves! Recommended!

I'd really like to recommend this, but RTS with neither active pause or even a slowdown/bullet-time mechanic is just not enjoyable for people like me; completely ruins it. It would be much better with active pause, allowing for planning and thinking without time flying by (and it does fly by very quickly in this game, and the attack waves get brutal fast).

Given that it was released in 2017 and there's no update notices on the store page, I'm going to guess there will be no such changes, which is sad, because it seems pretty fun but for that.

Regretfully, not recommended for those who don't enjoy full-speed, pauseless RTS.

A spiritual successor to the old Lucasfilm Games' Koronis Rift from the Atari/C-64 days, which I was absolutely fascinated with in my youth, but always got stuck on because it just got invincibly difficult at a certain point. I still dream of completing it, though I suspect the ending is probably nothing to bark at.

Anyway, I was curious, thinking this has to have been directly inspired by KR, and, sure enough, it was! https://steamoss.com/app/779590/discussions/0/1700542332328216905/

"Scavenger SV-4 is a little bit "What could Koronis Rift have been on a bigger computer?" - but it's also a little bit "What if you were Ripley watching the scratchy video feeds from the crew on foot on LV-426?", and it's a whole lot it's own thing straight out of my imagination as a lifelong sci-fi fan."

This game recaptures that excitement and silent anticipation that Koronis Rift did, with that joy of discovering items and waiting to see what weird thing they turn out to be, all while adding some more tension and texture to it. And it's actually finishable and replayable. Absolutely love it!

10 HOUR UPDATE: This is a gem of a little game, with a lot of great attention to little details, and great writing. Love the horror element added -- I actually haven't seen the Rescue on Fractalus-style jump scares that I understand are in it, but I have definitely run into the what-the-hell-is-going-on psychological horror element.

36-HOUR UPDATE: This game has vaulted to one of my favorites, and is a memorable experience. I cannot recommend this game enough, whether you have a nostalgia connection to its original inspirations or not. A fantastic, well-written game that takes a semi-minimalist approach and does amazing work with it, creating an unexpectedly immersive experience. I will be watching this developer, and congratulate him on a fantastic, well-done piece of speculative fiction and game design.

Pentiment is an incredibly well-written, well-thought-out, compassionate, erudite (without being pedantic), and loving story told in medieval-style artwork brought to life. It's amazing and I love it.

It's quite an achievement to not only render a particularly remote slice of late medieval life in an appealing and humanizing way (I had always found medieval art from this period to be unappealing and, well, dumb-looking), but also compellingly render complex themes of social relationships, class, and political relationships on the ground during the era.

And all this while creating memorable characters you'll come to love and hate, as the case may be.

The art is amazing, the animation is surprisingly detailed, the there is so much intricate and delightful attention to detail.

This is a genuine, sublime masterpiece, and I don't casually use that word. I can't recommend it enough.

----

Special honorable mention 1: They actually artistically showed the direct aftermath of childbirth in vibrant medieval-style art. Bloodsoaked newborn and all. Wow.

Special honorable mention 2: The end of Act II when fingering the book-cooker was so, so satisfying. Really unfortunate phrasing, I know, but keeping it cryptic so as not to spoil. You'll know what I mean when the time comes. Bring marshmallows!

Note on Disco Elysium comparisons: Yes, as has been said, this is on par both quality-wise and empathy-wise with Disco Elysium. It's not nearly as long or grandiose in sweep, but it sits in the same pantheon.

Hey, a cave-flyer!

One of those games that is pretty enjoyable, feels pretty good, and you think, this is gonna be great with some more work. But it's apparently done, with the devs having announced in the last update (May 2023) that they're working on another project. And there are no apparent plans to work on PULSAR further. Dev updates no longer show on store page, so it looks pretty much like it's done cooking.

I'm not going to get into the politics of early access and the sound and fury over what is the appropriate amount of development for a kickstarted early-access game, but I will say that, all that aside, it feels rough, unpolished, and not quite complete.

I would love to see it get further love from the developers, but I also understand that financial/business exigencies may make this something they can't really do with what they could charge for the game. Maybe re-release as PULSAR 2 to continue developing, which I wouldn't blame them for either.

So, please temper my "it's not complete" criticism with your understanding that the world of game development is brutal, unforgiving, and rarely leaves developers with the resources and business leeway to do the "right" thing to the extent that would satisfy all the legions of vicious, hyper-critical players out there.

So, love shout-out to the devs and best hopes for the future either way. I'm leaving this review a tepid recommend, with the understanding that it's going to feel good for a few sessions until you start feeling like you're hitting the boundaries of the game's development, and the jank starts to become grating.

BUT, it does start to do something amazing, and it does scratch a particular itch and it's awesome while it's still scratching it. With the knowledge of where it is now, am I glad I bought 4 copies of it? Am I glad I played it with my family? Am I disappointed in it because of where it ended up? Yep and Yep and Yep. My hopes are continued development as PULSAR 2.

A clever criticism of popular ignorance, intimidation and cowardice in the Banderist regime in Ukraine and its war on the Donbass (as well as its repression/disappearance of domestic opposition). It really could, of course, apply to any country engaging in predatorial aggression and repression of dissent, which sure does apply to a lot of them, including most of ours. Many different bodies on that chandelier, from Vietnam to Yugoslavia to Iraq. Just place your own flag in there.

ALMOST-2025 UPDATE: Yeah, depending on how you interpret this, this either aged very, very poorly, or became all the more poignant. If we take it as shade thrown at Russia, history is going to remember this and other similar criticisms as sheer sophistry, hypocrisy, and projection, and a good percentage of you all will be ashamed to have so easily fallen for the neo-Con/Banderist delusion.

On the other hand, if you interpret it as I chose to, it's all the deeper. Many, many good Ukrainians have been rounded up and sent to their deaths for a corrupt, fascist regime, and they all hang on that chandelier. No one disputes the tragedy of what we now can call Ukrainization, but history will not be kind to those who allowed themselves to cheer on fascists as they turn their population into a battering ram against Russia on behalf of the U.S. imperial establishment. Banderists get what's coming to them, and deserve zero sympathy, but the vast majority of the Ukrainians did not deserve this.

Public service announcement:

EVERYONE likes politics in games, every damned person. As long as they agree with the politics, that is.

When people say "don't put politics in my game", what they actually mean is "I really don't like these politics". But they want to sound more principled than that, so they say "no politics".

Sure guys. Even no politics is politics -- being "unbiased" is just sharing in a common bias.