Recente recensies door Daniel

THIS REVIEW WAS WRITTEN AFTER PLAYING THE DLC (Whistle Blower)
The Good: The music and sound design was great at creating panic. They had very clear “ID:s” (identifying sounds) for each enemy, and their characters shone through good dialogue and creepy/disturbing actions. They did a remarkable job of creating panic and the camera makes the eyes of the enemy characters shine in a creepy way. The way they use darkness and visual range with the camera was excellent.
The Bad: We died a lot while playing, and the game did not care or adapt. There where a lot of trial and error sections, and you stopped caring if you died after a while, since it happened so frequently. The level design was also very flat, and filled with dead ends that did not fit with the “run in panic” style. Often you would find yourself running in panic, opening a door and finding no other exit. So you would have to wait for a few seconds for the monster to catch up and kill you so you could try another door next time.

Another bad thing about it was that we never really felt a sense of acomplishment or found a place to rest in between panic sections. This made it very tiresome and even the ending did not give us much in terms of a satisfying conclusion.

Take Away: Great use of VO and darkness, and the story and characters are very memorable and very scary. Not the best came for studying level design or encounters, but we can also learn from their misstakes. If a player dies more than three times in the same place something should change.

The best and worst heist game I've played in the last 45 minutes. Don't press 9, or something terrible will happen.

House of Caravan is a game that lacks an identity and has been poorly designed on a fundamental level. As a first game for a studio it's not horrible, and the price is reasonable for the amount of playtime, but for their next game I hope the developers learn that opening drawers is not the best gameplay.

The good:
Solid scope for a first game, they did not take on too much.
Coherent style in the graphics, and enough variation in models/props to avoid being repetitive.
Hidden doors in a mansion. Who does not like hidden doors?
The mansion itself seems to have gotten some love, even though it does not feel like people have actually lived in it.

The bad:
The writing is terrible on a fundamental level. Who writes a letter about a murder that they commited to the person who asked them to? and who keeps said letter in a drawer in a garage? signed with both names? The letters are clearly not written to a person, they are just a tool to tell the player what they should know.
The puzzles are varied, but their sollutions are sometimes less than elegant, and essentially you just walk around opening drawers until you find the right items. You don't feel smart when you succeed, which you should always aim for as a game designer.
VO is not the worst I've heard, but it does nothing to elevate the writing.
The ending is abrupt, and we are left with no sense of how the main character felt about the whole thing.
The repetitive voice lines for trying to open locked doors and finding match boxes are super enoying and shatter any immersion.

In Conclusion: As a first game from a small studio it's not the worst I've played, but when you brag about having worked on the Witcher etc, I expect a more polished experience with better fundamentals of what the player actions are. Also: sprint is too slow, walking is too fast.

There is so much attention to detail in this game, you can tell that there is passion behind the development. For me it's the best way to wind down after looong and stressfull days at the office. I've almost completed a full year now, and I still haven't grown tired of it. Instead I've grown a lot of crannberries, and I'm currently getting rich of of the wine I make from them. Stardew winewards here we go!

Probably one of my favorite games in a long time, 8/10.

I had fun with Rising Islands, and will most likely finished the game in the next few days.
The game features some pretty sweet platforming, and now and then you will enter an almost zen-like flow.

The story & cutscenes are not nearly as good as the actual gameplay, which is sad but for a first game from an indie team that is understandable (also, they are skippable). The true strenght of Rising Islands is the core mechanics and level design, so the most important aspects are good enough that I can honestly recommend the game to anyone who enjoys this sort of flowing platformer.

during my 50 or so minutes with the game I managed to get to the 2nd world out of three that you can see from the start, so it's probably not a terribly long game, but it does require your full concentration, and fast fingers.
I might update this review after I finished the game, but for now I need to rest my thumbs!

1, I got to put the seat down. Humans always forget this thing.
2, I helped a nude man who would not stop rhyming.
3, I was Nisse, protector of mankind.

10/10!
There is so much love put into this game, from how the eyes of the main character follows the cursur to the wallpapers in the house, or the cat in the barn. It does not feel like a product, it feels like a cosy insight in how a house gnome would see the world. Try it out!

Kill to Collect has some things that are awesome, some things that are good and a few things that I think could be better.

First of all the music and the title screen are amazing and set the tone of the game imidiately. This is a colorful yet violent game with an interesting world that takes you deeper and deeper below ground.

The good stuff is focused on the core gameplay: It feels nice to shoot robots in the face with a shotgun, to dodgeroll out of danger and use all the abilites at your disposal to Kill each boss on your hitlist. The soundeffects also help sell the core feel of the game.

The things that could be improved on are things like the tutorial which feels uninspired and disconnected from the rest of the experience. I also thing that the enemydesign and upgrades could use some work, since they feel like they have been mostly copied from other titles instead of going in the same direction as the rest of the game. Having a dystoption setting with lots of color is really cool, I wish that there was a better synergy between that and the upgrades etc.

Overall Kill to Collect is an entertaining game that shines brightest if you play it for fun with a few friends over Skype. It can be very hectic, adrenaline fueled and entertaining all at once.

Haven't played this nearly enough, but is is so much fun! I'm having withdrawal issues from the Overwatch beta and Spellsworn is jus the thing to cure me. Warlock was a great mod back in the day, and Spellsworn takes all the things that were great about it and set it in a modern game with great attention to detail and a high level of polish. I highly recommend you get a group of friends together and play it over skype. You will not regret it!

Shoot a bandit in the eye from 200 yards with a bow. He fell of a stone bridge and plummeted into the waters below. 11/10, would play again. And again, and again. Seriously, it's been four years and I keep coming back to this game. What is wrong with me?

Probably the game that has had the most emotional impact on me in my adult life. This game has a narrative that runs deep, a torrent of events that leave you gasping for breath at the end. It ruined me for other games for at least a week, my mind was still too busy processing what I'd just played to begin giving anything else more than a brief glance.

The gameplay is not as breathtaking, but to me it felt really solid and Elizabeth is the perfect companion on the journey, I was very impressed by how well she had been designed AI wise. Do I recommend it? With all my heart, yes. As a game dev I still study how this game builds up it's narrative so that I, one day, may make something that has a similar impact on someone else.