Recent reviews by TikiShades

I bought the game knowing the developer for good work, and reading exactly "build" and "deck" close to each other, expecting an entirely different sort of game.

Instead, I was treated to a really touching, enrapturing piece of "interactive fiction" as the game calls it. While I haven't fully explored the systems, I'm so intrigued by the concept that I can't imagine I'd put any less than three playthroughs into this, just for the Tarot deck building itself. I highly recommend this game to anyone who loves women who love women (platonically or otherwise), a fascinating take on the "dialogue tree" concept, and funky abstract (and utterly beautiful) pixel art.

If I had just one complaint: why would you not bring vegan cheese with you when you know your friend is vegan? Why would your vegan friend ask for pizza if she didn't know for sure you had vegan cheese? Who would eat a cheeseless pizza?? Gross.

You guys ever hear about that study where they got people to turn up the dial on a shock collar on a guy in another room for making mistakes? They got these people to hear screams of agony, never being told it was all an act? How they turned up the dial to lethal levels? Somewhere I read that it wasn't nearly as common for people to keep turning up the dial, and that a lot of people protested it and stuff.

But I know at least some of them protested, and I know some of them caved and continued anyway, damn the consequences.

Today I learned I would be one of those people who would, despite their protests, see it through to the end.

And for what? For nothing but solemn misery.

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Monster Sanctuary did to Pokemon what Stardew Valley did to Harvest Moon. It honed in on a few key elements that the genre-definers did well, and polished the ♥♥♥♥ out of them to a glossy finish.

Is the story any good? No, not particularly. Are the characters memorable? No, not quite. Is the soundtrack any good? It's fine, I guess. Are the monster designs creative, or do they at least have a clear-cut visual design consistency? Well, some of them do, sort of.

But the battles? The battles. Every *single* battle feels like a miniature puzzle to be solved. Each one provides rewards correlative to your performance and speed. While you'll eventually want to dodge past a few of the overworld encounters with some careful platforming, having to go through it is never too much of a slog. The boss fights (called Champion Battles) are such a treat to go through; beating them requires forethought and planning to progress past, but good play rewards rare items and even the chance to take the boss home with you. If you don't master it the first time, it's fine! You can try again later without penalty, picking up rewards that you missed. It's the best of both worlds, letting people progress when they're tired of throwing their head against it, but letting you go back when you want, so there's no fear of losing out on anything cool.

And each monster is its own little puzzle, too. Each one has a near-unique combination of elements and strategies for all of them to have 2 or 3 potential build paths to try and combine with other monsters on your team to round out a 3v3 strategy. The 6v6 Keeper battles are a gigantic can of worms that the game doesn't seem to explore quite hard enough for you to start getting the hang of, but from what little I've seen, it's plenty deep. Almost dizzying how deep.

My biggest complaints with the combat is that it's possible to progress through a large portion of the game before really needing to master good team composition and inter-connective strategy, so the difficulty curve is a little too gradual. I've heard a lot of folks have trouble in the final area of the game because of the difficulty spike, though I didn't experience this, as I was grinding out Champion battles long before I attempted to finish the game proper.

A final complaint would be on the "Metroidvania" concept. While there's certainly platforming and "unlockable upgrades" to gather, I never really got the feeling that I was expected to go back to old areas with my new abilities to find new areas to explore outside of small treasure rewards. The idea of each monster having an overworld ability to call on is super cool, but after about halfway through the game, you'll have gotten the chance to get a decent chunk of the available options, and so the game kind of stops asking you to use them. There's also a couple powers that are hard stop *necessary* to overcome certain obstacles, and the only way to get those powers are behind story locks, which makes me question exactly how thought out the overworld planning was in this regard. It doesn't evoke the feeling I usually get from Metroidvanias where I get a new power and try to think of all the places I can now explore with it to try and progress. I get the feeling that they had to start rushing to meet the deadline near the end of development, and the later half of the game was more railroaded because of it.

All in all, the game is highly recommended for fans of strategic turn-based combat, monster raising games, and quirky indie games with a lot of passion put in them. Here's desperately hoping for a sequel to explore what they've created even further.

A great 1v1 experience that is just as fun to watch as it is to play. After playing for just a few hours, though, I feel like I saw the majority of upgrades and was able to work out a lot of combinations in my head that I didn't get to personally use or see. The face maker felt a little restricted, too, as certain pieces couldn't be moved around, and nothing could be shrunk or expanded to make them fit together better, so it was pretty difficult to get creative with it.. I won't say that I feel like I ran through the content already, and I'll likely play many more hours of this, I do feel like it won't be a long-lasting part of my multiplayer circuit.

That's not necessarily a bad thing; for $6, I can't complain about tens of hours of enjoyment. I think the game has a really solid concept that isn't fully explored. I hope to see this game either get expanded upon in the future, steam workshop enabling, or just a straight up ROUNDS 2 that could add things mods might not be able to, like 2v2 or 1v3 modes. My hope is that enough people like ROUNDS that it encourages the developers to pursue the idea further. And if not? Well, I'm happy with what we got.

For someone who hates both Greek myth and "failing better" games, it is a testament to Supergiant's excellent writing capabilities that I could fall so heavily in love with this game. In no other game have I found myself so enthralled with such a large cast of characters; and so recognizable is their characterization and speech patterns that I could identify any of them by text alone. I'm so completely blown away that I worry it's jaded me on good character design forever as even the media closest to my heart will fail to live up to the expectations Hades has set.

I'm not done with Hades just yet, but I can't wait for their next game. Hell, I'd break my miserly habits and drop full price for their next game sight unseen.

This game ♥♥♥♥♥. Every different character build is guaranteed to be able to view the same game world and story in a different way, and the number of things the game tracks to make it feel reactive and responsive is truly next level. The unique... cast of characters? is also such an intriguing selling point to the game that I'm paralyzed by the thought of how many things I won't be able to see in a single playthrough. An excellent game to play with friends to discuss dialogue options; no two playthroughs will go the same way, even without procedural generation. I used to worry that my favorite games of all time might not ever change due to nostalgia, so it gives me great peace of mind that new games can still blow everything else out of the water. I'm not even done with this one and I'm already craving the next game out of this studio.

After a lot of pestering, I tried it. I played nonstop for the next few weeks. Adding mods didn't hurt, either. There's so much strategy to the game and so many fun builds. I hate roguelikes, but this one is a treasure by virtue of being fun at every point.

I hate roguelikes, and I don't particularly care for rhythm games, but I've smitten for the NecroDancer. There's a little more trial-and-error than I usually like, especially for a game that doesn't want you to take things at your own pace, but the progression and game length is usually short enough that failures don't sting for long enough to matter. What this game does to excel over other roguelikes is showcasing your progress. Once you master a zone and figure out the enemies, its exhilarating to see how fluidly you move about a stage, weaving through traps and bosses and walls like it was a level of Dustforce.

When you really get good and you can see a room and predict how you need to interact with it to progress, you feel like a genius. That's not something you can get often in a genre that defines itself on difficulty and randomness.

There is a lot to take in with this game, and while I wish more was explored in this space, more to chew on, its free. Its literally free. Its a short, but intense 15 minutes, well worth your time for the entrance fee.