Recent reviews by Brightlord Zander

A relaxing, casual puzzle game involving connecting train stations in specific ways to maximize your money.

Not terribly difficult and only about 20 hours to finish everything, but it's the perfect kind of game to relax and unwind to. It has good puzzle variety and a few bonus levels that change things up for more of a challenge. Just a solid casual game with my only major criticism being its short length

Overall: 7/10

A cute, short narrative story about life, death, and the struggle of moving on.

This is more of a walking simulator with light puzzle mechanics then a game. However the story and erratic cast of character kept me playing until then end. Although the story touches briefly on some deep topics about death, don't expect anything too profound.

Overall: 6/10

A first-person space/puzzle game where you try to master the physics of disassembling ships in zero-G.

Although the premise of this game sounds a little tedious, both the mechanics and the story ended up being extremely enjoyable! The story did a great job of setting up the environment and motivation. Each shift is only 15 mins, but the looming debt from your corporate overlords creates an urgency to complete as much as possible so you don't fall into even more debt.

The gameplay itself can get a little stale once all the ship types and tools have been unlocked, but the story managed to keep me coming back until the end about 40 hours in. Even though the ships are technically generated randomly for infinite replay ability, I didn't feel a huge need to keep playing once the story had finished.

Overall: 8/10

I'm not really sure what I just experienced, but it was beautiful, unique, and fascinating to explore.

Game-play is an adventure/puzzle style with a few light combat sequences. If you have ever played this game designers previous games (Limbo or Inside) it has a very similar feel. But all the puzzles and environments have taken a HUGE step up in quality.

The story, like the designer's previous games, is minimal with no dialog and all story elements delivered via context clues in the environment. While that kind of storytelling can be super engaging, it makes for a vague ending that is left up to your interpretation. This can be mildly irksome for people like me who enjoy a story with a solid resolution, but didn't impact my overall enjoyment very much.

Overall: 8/10

I like this game a lot. Its a cool concept, with a fun and innovative way of crafting potions that feels very rewarding.

So after that glowing review, why am I voting this game down? Because this game is not finished. The developers have even said its not finished themselves, but then released version 1.0 anyway and bailed. Their last update as of this review was December 2023, and they haven't released any news about any update progress since. It sucks when the developers bail on an unfinished game, it's even worse when the game has such a good concept like this one.

If/When the developers start updating this game again, i'll be changing my recommendation, but right now I just feel cheated by buying a partially finished game

Overall: Don't buy until Devs start updating again

EDIT: game has been updated as of Dec 6. 2024, will play and update review when I have a chance

An intriguing colony-sim/tower defense game with a steep difficult curve created by a solo developer.

I started off really enjoying this game. The colony management aspect of the game is incredibly deep, with the need to manage food, water, and even trash while building defenses and holding off increasingly difficult waves of enemies. Random events, starvation or poor planning often ends up with your village getting overwhelmed and having to start over. But a nice level up mechanic allows you to gain experience to unlock ability chests that improve everything from your towers, to spells, to how fast your villagers work.

My biggest complaint with the game, is that once you've successfully figured out a defensive strategy and stabilized your economy, your offensive options are extremely limited. In fact the game actually punishes you for pushing the enemy back by increasing the spawn rate of hostile units when reclaiming territory at all. While I understand that the idea of the game probably isn't to defeat the "corruption", I would have preferred a goal or some way to finish the campaign. As it stands you can only upgrade your units a limited amount, while enemy increases in strength every night, which basically ensures defeat eventually.

Overall: 7/10

A generic open-world, top-down, pixel art shooter with a painfully dull story.

This game had a lot of potential, reading some of the EA review it sounds like the game was significantly better before the 1.0 release. Regardless, the game in its current state wasn't bad, I had fun flying around and shooting things, but I wouldn't call this a great game.

First off, none of the game mechanics really felt flushed out or fully utilized. There's several abilities you get later in the game that you can use to backtrack places you already been, but its like 3 places for each ability and you don't get anything unique for doing it, so they are basically pointless abilities. Combat was fun, but weapon and ship customization was so basic it was, again, almost pointless. Overall this game just feels like someone's very first attempt at making a full game. A lot of promising features and good bones, but not really a game worth paying full price for quite yet...

Overall: 6/10

A unique blend of a factory, automation, and clicker genres. It doesn't really fit into any of those categories, but its the best way to describe it.

This interesting twist on a factory game that is less about automation and more about maximizing resources collected per click. While you do unlock full automation in the end game, there's a nice ramp up in technology and abilities in order to get there which makes unlocking it very satisfying. A number of interesting features along the way caught me by surprise and were a welcome fresh take on what is normally a very formulaic game loop.

Total game time is only about 20-25 hours, unless you want to stick around the one achievement that requires you to play for '64' hours. The gameplay can get a little grindy at points but it was never too egregious. Story was your typical vague indie backstory that has no resolution and only serves as a way to keep you busy while waiting for resources to collect.

Overall: 7.5/10

An isometric souls-like game with a simple, but powerful story

This game was very well designed. The map was organic and interesting to explore. Environmental puzzles were entertaining, but not difficult. Boss battles were challenging, but not impossible. Combat was fun and rewarding. Plus some of the story character were very unique and memorable.

My only major criticism of the game is that the story was pretty predictable. Lone protagonist explores ruined, dying world isn't exactly unique these days. The game itself was also on the shorter side, with less than 20 hours to 100%. Both issues didn't really impact my enjoyment of the game though.

Overall: 8/10

An innovative combination of a rogue-like deck builder and poker.

This game is an interesting concept and has a very detailed, and over-embellished, campaign that is very reminiscent of D&D lore. While the campaign was fun to play through once, it offers very little in replay-ability in my opinion, despite the game unlocking increasing difficulties after completing each campaign run.

Overall: 6/10