Recent reviews by LimyMonkey

Oxenfree is a slow paced, atmospheric story game, with a heavy emphasis on dialogue and paranormal thriller elements. The game excels at this niche, quickly becoming one of my favorite games I've played recently. Oxenfree borrows the best elements of a few different games / genres to create its own identity that is better than the sum of its parts. It borrows the atmospheric immersion and gameplay from walking sims like Firewatch and What Remains of Edit Finch, paranormal thriller elements of horror games like Phasmophobia and Alan Wake, and branching choice story elements from RPGs like Until Dawn and Life is Strange. These all add up to create an extremely compelling game that left me at the edge of my seat for hours.

While I did have some small annoyances with Oxenfree, such as frequent and rather tedious backtracking, and dialogue that is often too easy to accidentally skip, these annoyances are massively outweighed by everything the game got right.

In summary, I would recommend Oxenfree to anyone that enjoys slower atmospheric games and paranormal thrillers. If that fits you, I feel that full price ($10) is extremely fair and I for one would happily pay more than that to experience this game again for the first time.

Quite possibly the best free video game I've ever played. Sheepy effortlessly packs so much into a one-hour experience while maintaining a consistent level of polish and satisfyingly well crafted controls that it has left me thinking about it long after completion. This is most impressive when considering this is the first game by the development team. I look forward to trying anything these developers go on to do in the future.

As best I can tell, Mitoza was originally a 2011 Flash game on Kongregate created by one of the founders of Rusty Lake, and re-released in 2021 by Rusty Lake's publishing program. For the game itself, there is an RL easter egg, but Mitoza is otherwise unrelated to the story of the RL series.

This "toy" as RL describes Mitoza, consists of making a choice between two options, with each option showing a different cut-scene and then presenting a new choice, making a binary tree of outcomes. Going through all options took me under 30 minutes and the toy is free, so if you're taking the time to read reviews and interested by the connection to Rusty Lake, I'd say just play it.

Not a single word is spoken, and yet I feel like I know my character's life better than she knows herself. I highly recommend this game if you're interested in a tranquil, zen experience that genuinely evokes bliss.

First, before I begin, I feel that I need to give a couple gameplay details. Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is a roguelite adventure, where each round of robbing the bank has a very short timer (starts at 3 minutes). You begin each round in the same location with all enemies respawned, and you need to go back to wherever you last were to continue the story. This gives the feeling of never being safe, and always being rushed, adding up to a level of anxiety I needed to accept in order to enjoy this game.

I played, beat, and reviewed the first installment of this series 6 months ago at the time of writing this review. In that review, I brought up three primary aspects of gameplay. I'll look at the same three aspects in this review, as diving into these three aspects sum up my opinions on this sequel perfectly.

- Story: In the first game, I raved about the story. It was cute, playful, and the highlight of my experience. In this sequel, the story takes a backseat. There are still adorable monologues, characters, and hilarious dialogue, but this is marred by the feeling of being rushed by a clock that only lasts a couple minutes during gameplay. This got better for me over time as I realized the clock pauses during dialogue and as more whimsical characters are introduced, but nonetheless, the sequel does not come close to the original story.
- Action/Combat takes center-stage in this sequel. While I complained about the combat not being polished in the original, the sequel takes large strides to improves this. I actively want to continue playing after getting 100% achievements because the combat improvements, and while Turnip Boy's combat is still not as good as dedicated shoot 'em up games, I enjoyed it quite a lot.
- Metroidvania/Map: This is where the biggest improvements were made in the sequel. Traversing the map is the most important aspect of roguelite adventures, and where I criticized the backtracking in the original, this is possibly my favorite part of the sequel. The map is split into visually distinct sections which are all connected with interesting points of interest at every corner. The map still took a couple hours before I started understanding and memorizing, but once I did, my outlook on this game changed drastically, and I no longer felt nearly as rushed to do what needed to be done.

Overall, Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is a fantastic sequel to the cult classic Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. I can't wait for the third installment "Turnip Boy Commits Genocide." I recommend playing the first installment before playing this sequel, but I still highly recommend both, and would be happy paying full price for both.

Convergence is a 2D metroidvania platformer that follows an original story of Ekko from the League of Legends Runeterra universe, as he tries to defend his people and the cities of Zaun and Piltover from destruction. The highlights of Convergence are the tight controls, good platforming, and tie-in with League of Legends lore.

The story is original and reasonably interesting, incorporating pieces of Ekko's character in the city of Zaun. This leads him to interact with and fight a number of other names recognized from League of Legends and Arcane, as well as new characters and enemies. Overall, the story and writing are about average, and worth paying attention to, but often somewhat monotonous and predictable. The most interesting piece of Convergence's story is the fact that this fits into the larger League of Legends cannon, and helps fill in gaps in the existing lore.

As for the metroidvania-platformer gameplay piece of Convergence, movement and controls are of upmost importance to me. In this sense, Convergence is great and feels very good to play. While Ekko's movement is not as precise as dedicated platformers, and not as satisfying as dedicated fighting games, Convergence finds a good middle ground that makes movement generally feel intentional and effective.
The defining newly introduced mechanic to the metroidvania genre is the ability to rewind time. In theory, this allows you to experience what will happen in a fight, go back in time, and change your actions based on this new knowledge. In practice, rewind charges feel a lot more like health points and aren't executed quite as effectively as I would have hoped, though is incorporated well enough with the other mechanics as to not detract from the gameplay.
As for boss fights, most are relatively simple, with a couple end-game exceptions. I was reasonably satisfied with the bosses, though I think the difficulty ramp could have been spread throughout the game better, however perhaps I should have chosen an increased difficulty to begin with.

Overall, I would say Convergence is a worthwhile experience, particularly for those that enjoy metroidvanias and the league of legends universe. I don't believe it's quite worth full price however, and would recommend waiting for a sale to purchase.

Cocoon is an above average puzzle game, with a major focus on minimalism, atmosphere, and visuals. You're simply a little bug out in a large universe, trying to find your way. There is no dialogue or text on screen, and cut-scenes are rather frequent and transition smoothly with gameplay, which add to create a very atmospheric experience.

The puzzles range in difficulty but never really get very difficult. Most of my time playing Cocoon was spent walking where I need to go to complete the puzzle rather than actually thinking about how to solve it. This added to the atmosphere, but also meant I frequently wished there was a run button or that the walking speed would at least be faster.

Overall, if you're looking for a relaxed, atmospheric experience with light puzzle themes, Cocoon is a fantastic pick. While I personally preferred Limbo and Inside, Cocoon feels like a great spin-off with more focus on beauty over dark fantasies.

Lost in Play is an adventure puzzle game where you play as a sister and her brother as their imagination soars. The game seamlessly transitions between the two in real life and their imagined world, in which a box with crayon drawings becomes a monster, a bicycle becomes a magical flying dragon, and video games become important puzzles that must be solved in order to defeat the big bad and rescue your friends.

The game consists of progressing through chapters, where each chapter gives you access to a few screens, and you must utilize objects and NPCs in each screen to solve puzzles, win at mini-games, and ultimately complete a goal. In this way, Lost in Play is very much a point-and-click game, yet it is best played with a controller to walk around and interact with the world around you.

I had a grin from ear to ear throughout playing this game. Every animation is adorable and relatable, every dialogue is cute and delightful, and every puzzle and mini-game is original and entertaining. The gameplay can certainly be considered quite slow, with many unskippable animations, which does hurt replayability, but I never once wanted to skip those animations on my first playthrough.

Ultimately, given the short nature of Lost in Play and the limited replayability, I think the price is ever-so-slightly high and would recommend waiting on a sale, but would highly recommend this game nonetheless to anyone looking for some childlike fun in their life.

Dave The Diver is an exploration, Subnautica style game by day, and a restaurant sim, Gas Station Simulator style game by night. I'm aware this sounds like an extremely weird combination, but developer Mintrocket has truly made every action in this game fun.

The game goes through a cycle, where you go diving to catch fish twice per day, then at night, you head back to your sushi bar to sell the fish you caught. Selling sushi makes you money, allowing you to upgrade your gear, both to assist your underwater activities as well as restaurateuring.

Most of the raw game time in Dave the Diver is spent underwater. This phase is very reminiscent of Subnautica, but with more satisfying combat, and less fear factor. The night phase, while not as long, is where much of the charm of Dave the Diver comes in. There are loads of things to do and management to be done, with just the right dash of anime sprinkled in. Both phases are extremely fun, with hardly a dull moment to be had.

I never asked for a cave diving, sushi loving, side scrolling, management sim, 3rd person shooter, but we got it nonetheless, and I couldn't be happier. I'm reviewing in early access, and while I absolutely will come back and play more once it is fully released, I already feel that I got far more than my money's worth and am very satisfied with the extent of the game in its current state. I would absolutely recommend this game to anyone that enjoys somewhat mindless fun and slightly outlandish humor.

Fun and addicting through the 4 main levels including the free DLC. This took me a total of about 80 minutes. After these 4 main levels though, the next challenge offered is the exact same 4 levels, but horizontally flipped and you have to restart completely if you die. Unfortunately I think this game would be significantly better without that extra challenge.