Recent reviews by halfskye

Wow, I'm late to the game here, but just played through Chapter 1 last night in VR and was completely and totally hooked. The vibe of the game feels very much like a "Knives Out" story but plays similarly in a way to "Return of the Obra Dinn", though I should note both were released after "The Invisible Hours".

The mechanics of pausing, rewinding, and fast forwarding make for a super intriguing "whodunit" unraveling of mysteries as you replay scenes from different persons' perspectives, and follow them as they splinter away and rejoin one another, uncovering hidden motives and connections between characters. The planning and care that must have gone into all these interwoven subplots while maintaining a super compelling overarching narrative track is just incredible.

The conceit of the theatre as hub for this story is perfect and the user interface and tools presented at the chapter summary are so ingenious and perfect as well.

The inclusion of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison as major players in the story adds another layer of intrigue and allure, considering the historical context of their real-life relationship which was adversarial to say the least. These historical figures add some wonderful grounding and weight to the scenes and situations.

Can't wait to go back!

Super creative little indie title. I love Westerns, deck-builders, and choose-your-own-adventures and this is a fantastic blend.

It is very fun to think up different creative solutions to situations and see how they pan out. The same goes for upgrading and combining cards to see what kinds of variants and mysteries pop out.

The game is very short and due to its scope, you quickly experience repeated content and events and I found myself repeating the same successful solutions in order to survive 'til the end. Having beat the game, I might try again specifically with the intent to explore oddball choices and see where they lead.

I played this on the Steam Deck which was pretty fine and manageable (it's not explicitly supported of course). My only gripe with the design is that you tend to collect an enormous amount of cards pretty quickly and the selection of a particular card can get wonky visually. I'm guessing this is an issue for lower resolutions, but generally the game design just leads to an enormous amount of cards in-hand which can feel a bit unwieldy and a little unbalanced.

Overall: Great job, Devs! Very charming little game.

Mezal Worm is life.

Fantastic. Simple, clean design. Not gratuitous. Animations are top-notch. Environments are quite varied and gorgeous. Sword styles are varied and all very interesting. My favorite mode is "History Buff" where you are assigned a random swordsman against another random swordsman with a random AI archetype (aggressive, defensive, etc.) and then upon winning the bout you're given fun historical factoids about the various swords, styles, regions where they were developed, etc., and then you repeat the random process.

Super excited to follow the ongoing development and to try the experience in VR. All my play has been on Steam Deck.

What a wild ride! Masterful in every way and an instant all-time favorite.

Please go Inside blind.

Wow - my heart...

The nostalgic AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) vibe is top-notch. Looking forward to playing Too and <3

One of those games you start playing late at night and then unintentionally stay up playing until 6am on a work night...

Already marking this a Favorite for sure. Such a masterful and unique experience.

Just incredible. One of my all-time favorites as a kid growing up. Enjoyed the developer commentary from Tim and the gang.

Astonishingly and embarrassingly broken.

Constant crashes, extraordinarily long loading times (5-10 minutes at times), soft locking in-game glitches preventing progression, downloaded content deleted by faulty in-game utilities, menu glitches, etc.

It's really tragic because when the game actually works, it's actually quite a bit of fun and it looks great. But I've spent most of my time with this game feeling like an unpaid Quality Assurance Tester and a Crime Scene Investigator trying to piece together how to keep the game from imploding on itself.

For reference, I'm coming from WWE 2K19 on PS4 where I've thoroughly enjoyed that game's Universe Mode and was looking forward to dipping my toes into this new release. Most of my interest is in 90s era WWF, WCW, and ECW superstars, arenas, etc. Any attempts I've made to utilize online Community Creations extensively in any way has been an exercise in massive frustration - ludicrously long load times (I was experiencing 5-10 minute load times just getting through the "Press Any Button to Continue" intro screen even), constant crashes mid-match, extremely long load times in menu transitions and navigation, etc.

I briefly attempted to play the Rey Mysterio Showcase and was honestly really wowed by the presentation of the first major match from Halloween Havoc against Eddie Guerrero. The fairly seamless cuts back and forth from gameplay to retro match footage are really incredible. I got pretty far into the match only for it to crash and all progress was of course lost.

For what it's worth, I'm using NVMe SSD hard drives and my computer isn't a slouch. This has been probably the worst experience I've ever had with a game, which itself feels painfully under baked and rushed. In its current state, it feels like a Beta build. Maybe give it a year? I might give it a year myself and see if it can stabilize. i legitimately want to play the dang thing, but it just won't let me.

Wow, pinball translates surprisingly really well to VR. It's quite a bit of fun to endlessly play without the barrier of coin in your own little private space, and the paddle controls with the VR controllers feel pretty satisfying. No more begging mom and dad for quarters every 5 minutes!

I really dig both this title and Zaccaria Pinball. Zaccaria has quite a few more tables, but from my initial impressions it seems like the tables that FX2 has are as a baseline more elaborate and more modern feeling across the board. Zaccaria has what seems like comparable tables in their "Deluxe" collection, but I haven't yet sprung to pay for all the individual DLC tables. It seems like Zaccaria's tables are more recreations of real and retro tables, which is very cool but I appreciate the somewhat fantastical feel of the more elaborate and modern ones.

Very interesting and unique so far.