Recent reviews by maximilio

There aren't enough loops in this clicker game. You just unlock more heroes on the left side and can upgrade them. On the right side, you can choose to move the area you're on up a level. And that's pretty much it. I recommend something like Cookie Clicker or Candy Box (both free), or honestly any other clicker game.

A cult classic and incredibly cheap, Geometry Dash had been on my phone and Steam library unplayed - I never bothered to get past the first or second level. However, after giving it a chance, there is a lot of cool stuff to do. It is a music/rhythm game at its heart, so if you like listening to music, you'll like this game. The soundtrack and how they match with the levels is great and feels awesome.

Some of the harder levels - and by that I mean anything greater than or equal to "medium" - though, I think you'd have to be crazy to try to beat. Even beating them on practice mode where you can respawn a few meters back from where you died was frustrating.

The community levels integration is great. Level builders can use custom music that's on Newgrounds (I guess RobTop forgoes moderating his own music and puts that on Newgrounds's responsibility), and custom images and animations, to make their own levels, and there's tons of shiny gems, coins, "quests," map packs, "gauntlets," etc. throughout the game and in the community levels to make this game addictive and endless. The editor is also apparently very powerful as people make full-blown animations and completely unrelated minigames in it.

I can see myself getting really into this; the game would be perfect if it was a regular platformer instead of just a one-button game (of course that would ruin the whole rhythm aspect of the game...but AFAIK RobTop is actually planning a controversial update in the distant future that may add this).

The writing for this is really funny, interesting, and well-done: a science-fiction comedy about AI, physics, computing, determinism, cryptocurrency, psychology, space, that has you questioning the meaning of life. There are even "ads" that the AI makes you click on that link to an external website with bizarre advertisements for products that help flesh out the story and who this AI "Susan" is - a character on par with GLaDOS.

The gameplay and difficulty is extremely well-tuned. There are some hard levels but they should only take 5-7 minutes of trying to beat, and when you do it's very satisfying. The difficulty doesn't constantly increase as there are plenty of relaxing levels throughout and some series of levels that just beat themselves for the visual effects. After beating a challenging level, sit back and enjoy a few easy ones and the story. This game is all about the experience.

The aforementioned visual effects, combined with great, constantly changing per-level low-fi "music" and sound effects, really lend a strong Atari 2600 atmosphere that, despite its simplicity, will encompass you.

If you like achievement hunting, you can easily (but with some effort) 100% this game's achievements, something almost unheard of in Pixeljam's other games.

I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone even slightly interested!

I originally bought this game to help listen to their excellent, hilarious game-dev podcast, Coffee with Butterscotch. They have the same humor on the podcast as they do in the game, except probably way better expressed in the podcast.

For the first few hours of the game, I was unimpressed. It was very obvious that the game was designed with mobile in mind, such as the big, honkin' "MENU" button that is on the screen at all times, and the controls sometimes switch to controller randomly if you don't press any buttons for a second. (These are probably not real concerns but just bother me for some weird reason. Even the fact it was made in Game Maker weirded me out a little but they have a web backend that proves to me their tech know-how and legitimacy. Again, not real concerns.) The grass of the Savannah, which makes up most of what you'll be looking at, was also kind of ugly. And I didn't like the first NPCs, weird aliens that made gross farting noises and talked with Southern accents.

But after a few hours, I got more invested. I took pride in my base, even though all it is is an ugly rectangle that doesn't protect me from anything because I'm in a safe zone (once you get into later areas, having walls can be useful to keep out the nuisance of low-level monsters - just wish they wouldn't agro through walls as it still keeps you from teleporting, sleeping, etc. if they do so). I have a farm, fishing spots, all the crafting stations (there's a lot of crafting stations - I have like a 30 ft line of them). And then I got really obsessed/addicted. There is so much gameplay to do here, and dialogue and quests to do. A lot of the quests are fetch-questy or ask for some items, but there is always an interesting story, and funny dialogue, to these quests; and the combat is interesting enough that scavenging for these resources is always fun. A little bit of mindless walking around chopping stuff is also just relaxing and feels productive in a sense. Leveling up your weapons to finally be able to take down stronger beasts you've come across - and one-shot earlier beasts - is always satisfying. The way it's set up is an interesting balance of quantity and quality. There is a huge, almost endless if you don't have the time, amount of stuff to do, and it's all of good quality.

A lot of people compare this favorably to Don't Starve. I haven't played that but think it's also similar to Stardew Valley, and I have enjoyed this way more than Stardew. There's something slightly more compelling about the loop of gathering resources to build better weapons to be able take down tougher monsters, than gathering resources to buy more seeds to gather even more resources. There's a time and place for each though; Stardew's realistic setting is nice and universal.

This game has a beating heart. The three brothers who developed the game started it when one of them got cancer. It was meant as a world to escape into, and as possibly "the last game they ever make" (don't worry, afaik the brother is doing well now). They made this because it's something they really wanted to make. Some of the busy-work game loops that are in the game are there because that's genuinely something that they like in games, to be able to build up something over time and take pride in it.

The community is also awesome. They did a giveaway and, not affiliated with Butterscotch, bought and gave away 12 keys for Butterscotch's newest game Levelhead. I won one of them and was given the $20 game; it was awesome.

This game is great. Buy the game, listen to their podcast, and you'll easily be a Butterscotch fan.

It took a few days of playing to get use to get use to the speed of the controls, but I persisted because it was so well-polished, it is perfect to boot up and just play for five seconds (literally...), and because I know someone who played it for over 50 hours (I think you must have to combine drugs to get that many hours out of this).

Soon the game will be burned onto your retinas and you'll find yourself playing the game even when you're trying to sleep, and you'll be itching to go back and try your newfound knowledge of the spinny vortex - a ridiculously simple thing that will manage to suck down some precious minutes of your life.

Not sure where the strange concept came from - maybe Tempest?

It takes a bit of time to get use to the controls, but after that becomes incredibly addictive.

I played it for like 6 hours one day and managed to get to 59 seconds on the last level - a few times. HELP. Update: Did it. Thank god.

The story is really good. It's incredibly poignant and sad (and spooky?) the glimpse into these peoples' lives that we get. Honestly just a genius work of fiction.

Shameless plug: I was inspired (because To the Moon had so much of an impact on me I guess) to make a game about exploring someone's mind and collecting mementos. It's a free web game at https://maximilian.itch.io/the-burning-locks (warning: probably not as good as To the Moon).

What the ♥♥♥♥?

Are the different girls unlocked in a random order or something? Why is the starting story of a girl who gets caught stealing for the poor, so she gets - as a better alternative to being hanged - tied up and gang-raped? One of the offending males even finds it distasteful but goes along with it anyway - what great internal conflict! /s. The last artwork is of her tied up, gagged, and covered with semen. The next story is about a girl whose step uncle turns into a tentacle monster and rapes her despite her pleas to stop, then she gives birth to a demon.

I'm not that sensitive to or personally offended by this ♥♥♥♥ like those SJW types are, and I don't use the word "rape" lightly. But that's exactly what this is. The girls always end up giving in and enjoying it, but not easily. That's why the game is about "besting" them first by disarming them physically. Once you've done this, you "discipline" them in a groping simulation, where you maximize either "pleasure" or "pain" to unlock two different endings. Why the ♥♥♥♥ is "pain" a second path? Seriously?

I'm aghast at the fact that there are so many positive reviews and no one pointing this out. Am I missing something? Am I not supposed to be taking it as seriously as I should? I'm guessing this was made in Japan (the voiceovers are Japanese), and those weirdos have done worse and I guess get a passing flag. The translations seem to be done a bit oddly; they are somewhat hard to understand, but may add texture.

The match-three gameplay is well-implemented, fun, but nothing special, and mindless popping noises like all these types are. There's also a store and upgrades to aid the mindless, addictive gameplay. Each girl has different strengths, weaknesses, and abilities which I have to admit are actually pretty cool. For example, one girl has a fire ability that causes some of the game tiles to light on fire, and if you use those tiles in a chain, you get damaged; there is another where some zombie tiles get placed on the board that block a few of your attacks.

If you are interested in playing a match-3 / battle game with upgrades with some disturbing rape scenes to break up the gameplay, then this game is for you. The game is actually well-done but there is content in it that shouldn't be there, or if it is, please acknowledge it or put some warning somewhere.

UPDATE: So after playing the game some more, I have decided to change this review to positive. The stories are actually really interesting, bizarre, and well written, with a range of women characters with strong and diverse personalities. The first two stories are just the weakest of all of them, one being a copy of "Robin Hood" with a weird ending and the other being stomach-bursting tentacle demon. The other stories though are creative, well-written, and just a little strange. The game is obviously really well-polished and the devs are basically giving it away for free.

A fairly boring date followed by a twist ending. The twist isn't really incorporated into the story, more just told to the player in a few lines at the end. Ever heard of "show, don't tell"? Spoiler: The whole date was inside a computer, and I was Turing test the whole time. When a spoiler is that short, it's not that great of a surprise anyway. You can probably guess the ending by looking at the title of the game. The whole thing is an interesting idea but executed poorly. See Doki Literature Club to see basically the same idea done right.

Somehow, despite how simple the "twist" is that is abruptly explained to you at the end, it isn't explained well. Why does she have, tragically, only one day to live? Maybe she learns too much in the time that she's alive that the computer doesn't have enough memory to continue to simulate her? Did you try restarting the computer? I don't know, I just came up with that in like 5 seconds, why didn't the author put a tiny but of effort into what is the crux, the only interesting thing, about the whole story?

If you're going to play the game, I just recommend not going to the arcade on the first playthrough. There is like one line on the other routes that provide a tiny bit of foreshadowing that greatly enhances the culpability of the idea. Most of it is filler material in which you are "on a date," though.

Pure abstract perfection with just enough a touch of arbitrarity as to be lifted out of the invisible, eternal dreamworld of math, nothingness, and formlessness to become something in the world of forms that actually exists and is tangible. By feeling about the multifaceted tesseract that emerges from the single, infinitely bifurcating axiom that is nothingness, we can feel the entire universe itself.

The game has been very well-received, but I'm surprised there is no competitive scene and that the prevailing attitude is, like Jonathan Blow said, "As long as you still have questions, continue" - meaning that, at some point, you should stop playing. This game has enough depth to warrant continuous years of play and mastery. In the hub world, the map loops back on itself, but in the challenges, the play field goes on infinitely, so one interesting thing to do would be to see how far one could get in the challenges. Or to try speedrunning the whole game? I'd like to see this at GDQ. Droqen has started working on a port and worthy successor to Starseed Pilgrim, so maybe these ideas will come true.

https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1846194033

https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2569684516

https://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1840418565

Check out the excellent Starseed Observatory at http://starseedobservatory.com/ for further analysis and discussion of this game.

It bothers me probably more than it should that most enemies can't jump, and the ones that do only jump up "steps" and don't have the AI to jump over gaps or jump off steep ledges (which the player can survive a high fall). The enemies getting stuck because they won't jump and running back and forth madly feels very "gamey."

Also, don't think that this game is randomly generated; only the items and monster spawning is random. The levels are actually chosen from a small pool.

Everything is ridiculously tiny and even with 20/20 I strain to see crates on the ground. Not even the menu text saves your eyesight. You can set the zoom higher but then you're at a disadvantage not being able to see around you.

--However, despite all this, I am not really criticizing this aspect. The faraways view is actually pretty neat and unique. And the game has excellent, beautiful visuals. All the monsters look like they could've been pulled from a Ghibli film. The music is also beautiful.

I haven't played the game very much yet (and I suck at it), so I may come back and change this review.