Recent reviews by maximilio

A game all about making the most out of each day and "striving for excellence in everything you do." You could just do one task, go to sleep, start a next task, and so on. But the game flows best when you're juggling multiple different things. You'll want to be working on several things at once to be efficient, since it takes time to walk to places. And that's where the game really shines. Occasionally you'll have an off day and go to sleep at like 4pm, but if you think, you'll often be able to come up with a new task that serves your overall purpose. The game manages to impress the importance of filling your day with important things.

The system that is the game as a whole is mechanically and thematically intertwined with itself in many ways. It's a crafting game, and you'll need different resources to make things. Each of the villagers has their likes and dislikes. As said, it takes time to walk places. It's from this complexity that causes the player to need to juggle tasks.

And I haven't even gotten to the psychological benefits of this game. Many people consider this game to be a sort of salve for depression. It takes place in a beautiful, natural valley, it's all about down-to-earth farming of vegetables, fruits, and animals, and you can give gifts to the neighbors and make all sorts of friends.

It's through this context, combined with the mechanics, that this game imparts its one great lesson. It's amazing that this was coded, written, drawn, and musicianed by one person. I think this is Eric's way of passing on his apparent mentality of “Never stop striving to achieve perfection. Settle for nothing less than excellence in everything you do.”

After spending a whole day marathoning the game and reaching 100% perfection, I just got up and randomly did a bunch of chores around the house; I guess it inspired me? Or maybe the chores had been piled up since I hadn't done anything else but play the game for 48 hours? Either way, positive review from me.

I spend my first 10 hours of this game not really getting it, but making myself play it because it looked cool and I wanted to get into it. I would just pick up random spells and try to aim them, and it wasn't very effective.

My first breakthrough was when I finally got a powerful build playing as Hazel, that's when I learned how powerful building a cohesive deck can be. Hazel focuses on creating structures such as turrets. And when you set up a bunch of turrets in a row, you're effectively dealing tons of damage to the enemy side. This really becomes apparent for one of the bosses which is basically a meat shield. It really feels great when you're able to just completely decimate the enemy side of the field.

Strong players recommend making a plan for building your deck, but what does that really mean? First, you need to familiarize yourself with the game's cryptic terminology; learn what frost, fragile, poison, trinity, flow, kunai, structures, link, anchor, crack, break, spell power, reflect, haste, consume, jam, mana, doublecast, mana regen, backfire, flames, root, shuffle, shield, and defense are. Then, when setting your focuses, read the description to find out which focus focuses on each keyword. When choosing spells and artifacts, scan for your keywords; if you see it, read the spell and add it to your deck if it seems helpful. Generally, it's a good idea to be focusing on about two things per run. By playing in this way, you'll also gradually notice opportunities for more unconventional strategic decks, but focusing on something like poison plus frost is a great start.

Play through the game as each character, and each loadout. Choose focuses and build decks that fit each character, that's the fastest way to learn. Keep in mind the intended "feeling" that each character is intended to evoke. Each character has a personality and was designed to evoke a certain feeling from their playstyle. On the wiki from the development notes, for example, Selicy is described as, "wants revenge, lively, wild, likes the cold," and her personality is listed as "rude." If you're playing the character correctly, that's kind of how it should feel. Once you've beat the game as each character, go to the deck strategy page on the wiki and try out each deck that's listed. After you've begun to master the mechanics, that's when the real fun begins. You can begin to strategize to build your own deck ideas, and you'll find yourself coming up with new ideas.

There is a huge amount of content here to sink your teeth into. There are so many ways to play, potential for decks, alternate routes/modes; this rich probability space is worth exploring, and this software will keep you entertained and with things to do for a long time.

This puzzle game seems seriously under-recognized, and under-appreciated. Yeah, it's a match-three game, and its immediate presentation and art style aren't super amazing. However, below the surface, this game and its systems run very deep.

The game that the developer made prior to this is another puzzle game. I haven't played it, but it looks really smart, even pretentious; it's like playing an M.C. Escher painting. So yeah, this wouldn't be a developer that would just go and make a dumb match-three puzzle game.

The developer really believes in their own game. They even claim to be good enough to beat the bots in battle mode on nightmare difficulty, which shows how much they have invested playing their own game.

The storyline of the game fits it perfectly. It's whimsical and silly; you start out searching for a salad.

Anyway, what exactly is so "deep" about this game? The answer is in the random generation. This game procedurally generates all of its own levels, I assume by building each level backwards. The developers even had to access some special supercomputers in order to generate thousands of levels for the campaign. On top of this, the game is able to generate levels that include any number of combinations of the various "modifiers" that change a level's mechanics.

The AI that you play against can, of course, utilize the reverse solution in order to intelligently play. Also, the game can tell you when you've reached a dead-end in a level, which is pretty smart. It's easy to overlook, but carefully observing you can see a lot of elements of polish in this game. The random quests and leveling system, which is quite complex, for example, are another layer and welcome inclusion. Not to mention ONLINE MULTIPLAYER. It makes sense that it took YEARS to develop this simple looking game.

This game is a feat in system design, but it's also quite fun! Shooting tumblestones is snappy and responsive. The music is calm and tingly, fitting for playing the puzzles. Beating levels is satisfying, and takes almost the same amount of critical thinking that a puzzle with designed levels would take. But there are infinite of them.

I feel silly reviewing this, even sillier for having "played" it for this much time. It's a testament to how crazy I am that I started "using" this app this semester when I'm doing homework, as a way to increase that cheevos/perfect game count while doing work. And I will continue to waste my computer's resources with it until I get to 100 hours.

Again, I feel silly reviewing this; it's like reviewing a rock. All the app is is basically a static image. The character slightly nods her head and the cat tail wiggles. Also, you can see a bit of weather out of the tiny windows. You could basically open up a nice PNG on your second monitor and put your preferred music player on and have something better than this with more music variety.

Immediately upon opening it, I just turn off the music and sound and minimize the app, so that I don't have to hear the same "lo-fi hip-hop" on repeat. Really the only reason this has "Overwhelmingly Positive" is that no one is going to write a negative review for a free rock. Well, except me I guess.

This game is rough around the edges but a real gem if you give it the time and the chance. A lot of work was clearly put into the game, and just a small amount of extra polish could improve it a lot.

By rough, I mean all default Unity UI/menu elements, the framing and new player experience, the buggy way that quests and progress on the main storyline are tracked, the confusing and buggy way that the game seems to work after you’ve beaten the game (it doesn’t save anything after that point—you have to keep the skull), the emphasis on the completely empty sewer dungeons, the ugly unchanging dream/hint at the end of each day, the “buy” button on lottoshrines, the buggy achievements after the “reset,” an exploit that allows for potentially infinite easy money, and even something like being able to escape redscarves by just pressing the escape button. When I first booted up the game, I frankly was like, "Oh no, what the heck did I just get myself into?" After all the work that clearly went into creating the city, I just don’t understand why they didn’t put in the small amount of polish that would be needed to fix some of these things. However, if you manage to look past all of these things, you’ll be able to appreciate a real treat of a game.

As for what is great about this game: atmosphere. This game is all about the atmosphere. The city is beautiful, and you get the impression of being a lowly janitor there. There are many strange items, and some shops where items are way to expensive for you to ever afford. One day a week, Theday, is special and there are crowds of aliens and music that is still stuck in my head. The place starts to feel like home, and you start to figure out where things are. There are really only a few mechanics in the game; most of the game is simply the atmosphere.

The game is very relaxing to play. You simply walk around the beautiful, pixelated world and pick up items on the ground. Some things you incinerate to earn money, others are edible, and some you can sell to vendors. That’s it; the “adventure” items of weapons, potions, etc., are all just flavor to support the atmosphere—none of those mechanics are actually in the game. The game is very simple to just pick up and play for a while. Once you get a hang of what you’re supposed to do, wandering and taking in the sights and sounds of the city is a lot of fun. There are also shrines that you should try to visit on your daily routes.

This game has some issues with polish, but looking past that, it is a beautiful game with some unique and simple mechanics that is very fun and relaxing to play.

This game has some of the most atrocious writing I have ever seen. It reads like a history textbook but is worthless in the fact that it's fiction. Throughout the game Andre gives his entire personal history of being in WWII, sprinkled with plenty of random Proper Nouns, and paragraphs of completely unremarkable and boring events. And then, when you talk to the factory workers on each level, you'll get the creator's weird, unremarkable, and completely unasked for opinions on economics, capitalism, military expenditure, labor relations, morality, and so on. All of it served with a weirdly sexist undertone.

Anyway, that's not even what this game is for, it's for the platforming, right? But the game doesn't redeem itself there either. The controls are floaty and feel bad. There are only a few mechanics and they don't change in the entire game: breakable crates, pushable crates, workers that walk back and forth, moving platforms, and spikes. You'll have to break Liselot out of some crates with Andre's dash ability and use Liselot's jumping ability to push crates down for Andre to jump on, in every level. The spike hitboxes will kill you when they shouldn't. Each level feels very uninspired. It's also incredibly easy and only in the last few levels does it become a challenge, and even then the difficulty is fighting the game's janky-ness. The moving platforms will go out of sync and you have to wait a while for the right jump opportunity. I also had to find a workaround when one moving platform went off its tracks and just flew out of the entire level.

In arcade/old school mode, it's so easy to softlock yourself with the pushable crates, which don't reset on death. I almost lost 1 hour if I had jumped into an area I wouldn't have been able to get out of or even kill a character (to reset the chapter). Luckily, I was already wary about the crates and didn't do that. I did get softlocked by the crates once but was still able to repeatedly kill a character to reset the chapter, losing ~15 min.

There are a few decent chiptune tracks that are listenable but don't really evoke anything. Some of the pixel art is decent but you can tell from one look the game is ugly anyway and they also really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up the parallax.

I give this janky cool aid factory 3.5/10

UPDATE: I bumped up the rating a bit because I got to the hardcore levels and they are a bit more challenging. The game is still ridiculously easy, probably because it was originally intended to be played on an iPhone. The writing still really rubs me the wrong way, I don't really know why. There's an achievement calling Andre's word vomit "deep and meaningful"... ugh.

I normally don't like point-and-click adventure games, but this was an exception. Almost every puzzle/objective moves the story forward in a significant way or has some kind of clear symbolic meaning, in some times very clever ways. There was a very brief stagnancy in chapter 3 where you have to do some contrived, random puzzles that make no sense, but that was all. The game is fairly linear, and it's easy to figure out what you're supposed to do, with poetic hints as guides. Detention does puzzles/objectives right.

I feel like they could have added a few more monsters in the game without it getting repetitive, but I appreciate the restraint.

The story is told very jumbled and cryptically, which is why I recommend playing the game through twice. You only gain the key piece of information towards the very end, which provides light on the rest of the story. Other than a general oppressive atmosphere, I wasn't sure exactly what was going on until then. The story is a very poignant tragedy, and it makes a lot of sense putting all the pieces of the puzzle together once you have all the information.

Highly recommend this art!

This game had a lot of potential to tell a deep and touching story but didn't. You learn at the beginning that there was a car crash and the person has trauma from it. But then later on once you get to the conscious mind at the end, you find a bunch of old books and coffee, so I don't know what's the problem: are they resorting to coffee to soothe their trauma? Then, at the crucial moment at the end, Dusty (who is really the courage part of the mind), gives up his scrapbook; where nostalia factor in the situation? I think that it shows the writers' insecurities, and is just a collection of random things following a theme, more than creating an actual story.

The game is also very disparaging toward the left brain. The right brain actually was interesting and had some cool, metaphorical sights, but the only thing in the left brain is a lot of gears, and, like, creepy spiders and spiderwebs, and that's all that's going on over there. Oh and "math", apparently, though I didn't see any math. It also seems like the writers may have gotten the left brain mixed up with the primal brain at some points.

At one point, when you are fighting the Plague Nightmare, it's singing about all of these sickly things and just mentions "autism" once in passing. Kind of a poor choice honestly. Does our person have autism too? There's also an annoying bird that follows you around that has, like, one brain cell.

I'm not going to make this a negative review, as they obviously did really tried with this one. If you play it, you'll probably have a mediocre experience, which is okay, except there is better stuff out there. I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a strangely specific interest in games about minds and mental health like Psychonauts (a game that shows how the whole thing can be handled and written better).

Figment resorts to caricatures to illustrate parts of the mind rather than humanity.

To end on a few positives: Some people are talking about poor controls. That may have been recently patched. You can actually use the right mouse button instead of ctrl which the game tells you to for whatever reason. The sword charge-up could be better but other than that I found the game to be responsive, and it runs smoothly. Also, the game is great visually. All things considered, it's actually a well-made game, which is why this review is positive; it just failed to meet my expectations, and had a few specific problems.

After having finally beaten every level, I think it's time to do a review. What originally attracted me to this game was the 2d platforming and beautiful, minimalist aesthetic. And the game really looks and runs great. There are the (randomly generated?) parallax background patterns, leaderboards, different time rankings you can aim for, replays, an open level-unlock system, one soundtrack that fits perfectly and changes and evolves as you play - the game is very polished.

After beating every level, I can say that each and every level is unique, which is amazing as there are 160 of them and the core mechanics are so simple. Every chapter has a kind of theme or focus, for example chapter 8 focuses on moving walls that kill you, or another chapter deals with disappearing platforms, etc. And even each level in a chapter will have a fresh take on the mechanic. Many levels have their own, special hazards that are unique to just one level! I never felt like I was having to repeatedly do a certain kind of maneuver.

My one criticism is that the platforming isn't perfect. The character moves very stiffly without any inertia in the horizontal direction. If you jump off a ledge, there isn't any forgiveness if you press the jump button too late which is often implemented in platformers. And, for some reason I can't tell, something makes some jumps feel luck-based, like you'll do a jump over and over, finally get it right for a reason you can't tell, then do it again and keep dying again.

However, luckily, the unique mechanic of going inside walls and reversing gravity is implemented well. Being able to fling yourself into the air great distances is certainly exhilarating.

If this game looks at all interesting to you, then it's probably worth playing. But note that this game gets to be very difficult, so you have to be into hardcore platforming. The levels will at most take 20 seconds to beat, but you'll have to play each level a lot more than that to beat each one. If my play time is any guide, each level will take an average of 5 minutes. Also, I don't even understand how it's possible to get a full moon medal, let alone a full sun medal. I've managed to get 70 crescent moons and am aiming for 100 for that achievement, but in all of that, have only gotten 1 full sun medal. So yeah, it can be difficult.

Beautiful, genius, and brilliant. Like the prequel, you're going through the memories of a man on his death bed. The atmosphere is very sad, reflective, and spooky; you're basically going through all the highlights of someone's entire life in ~5 hours, and it feels real. (There are the needed moments of humor throughout, primarily provided by Dr. Watts.) They say life flashes before one's eyes at death - is it really possible that, in one instance, you could remember your entire life? This game shows that all of the important stuff could really be squeezed into an instance.

This game could make a great novel, or a good movie, but it's well presented as a game. All the pixel art is great of course, there are a few instances of (unimportant) choice, and the intermittent puzzles give the feeling of the technical side of traversing memories, but, most of all, the beautiful soundtrack accompaniment really amplifies that reflective, sad feeling about the shortness of life.

This game was a rollercoaster but the ending didn't wrap it up well, but I'm okay with that. To the Moon, though it used a tiny amount of deus ex machina that I can't criticize, had a legitimate ending that wrapped things up amazingly. In this game, a lot of interesting and crazy things happened toward the end, which was a whirlwind of emotions to experience, but looking back, I don't really know what happened. So, it's not quite as cohesive as a whole as its prequel, but still an equally powerful emotional experience.

This game will make you think about life as poignant and short, and instill an amazing feeling of sadness and wonder. This game (and its prequel) is experiential art that will stick with you, and you won't ever be able to fully recover from.