Recent reviews by SubliminalClown🦦

Another one for the pile of Christmas themed hidden-object-games my wife seems unable to outgrow so that we can finally move on and play the same idle clicker games...

The game is alright, but more of the same when it comes to BFG titles. Kinda like how most Disney+ shows nowadays are kind of alright but very forgettable. The only unforgettable thing is how creepy this game's rendition of the cheshire cat 0..0'

It's alright, I guess. If you're not big on HOGs, then get it when it's on sale. The puzzles were a bit lazy/too easy compared to other HOGs put out by Big Fish Games, but I guess that's the point considering the festive theme

Grindy as hell if you're an achievement hunter and there's some translations missing if you want to play it in English, but overall enjoyable if you like the idea of building up an empire from scratch. I got the game for free in Early Acess, but if I had to buy it, I'd say a fair price is around 5-6$, mostly because of how grindy and repetitive it gets after a short while.

Oddly entertaining game and nowhere near as what I would label an "adult game".

Sure, there're sex toys and alcohol and smoking and if you want to make sure you get a ton of fans and money, I recommend you make sure you get enough cocaine for all your models, but at the end of the day, this is yet another tycoon management style game (with an adult theme).

There are no sex scenes, no actual nudity, not even an animated butt to make you feel like ALT+TAB-ing the game if someone pops up behind you while playing.

The only real complaint I have is how short and lacking the game feels after you're done unlocking all outfits and getting all achievements... So yeah, thanks again for the birthday gift, Arti if you see this.

Huniecam Studio 9 / 10
ArtifiTrandSill gifting skills level 10/10

If you bundle this together with Dorf Romantik and Townscaper, you have the ultimate cozy games pack to last you for a lifestime.

10/10 recommended if you're looking for an escape from your boring life outside of Tiny Glade. Worth every $ and some!

Life is Hard... because the devs abandoned the game, leaving you battle more bugs than enemies. After 3 failed attempts on Veteran (medium difficulity), i decided to play on Easy until i learn how to play the game better. After 3 days, when my village is finally sustainable in regards to food and soap for hygiene, i get attacked from both sides. Having only 1 hero, I am forced to decide which side to try and defend. By the time I managed to fend them off on one side, the enemies on the other side leveled most of my village. Frustrated, i start again, choose a different god, hoping that it will help develop the village faster, so that i can have better defenses against enemies. Same scenario happens with attacks on both side, village burnt to ashes again. F*** this game.

TLDR: If you're a fan of oldschool tycoon management games, then you should give Winkeltje a chance. The $15 price tag seems more than fair to me, the game offers plenty of content and things to do to make it worth every dollar.

Having spent a little over 100 hours in it, the game is super enjoyable if you're looking for a relaxing shop manager game. No daily quests, no microtransactions, no paywall nonsense. There are currently only two complains I have and others mentioned them before me: 1 No speed settings, which is terrible in endgame when your shop is large and your employees take their sweet time restocking shelves. 2. Upgrading the work stations takes A LOT of grinding, so if you're an achievement hunter... well I've spent the last 6-7 hours literally grinding for the last 3 achievements related to upgrading those damn work stations.

BUT, let's get into what I love about the game:
1. Small details like how your employees are children. At first I found this kinda odd, but doing a bit of research into Dutch culture, I find it really cool that the devs included it in the game.
2. On King's Day events, everyone wears orange, another nice touch for that authentic Dutch feel.
3. Shop aesthetics also heavily influenced by Dutch culture, which was so fun. My current shop reminds me of my trips to Zaandam and I can't get enough of it!

Have I mentioned Dutch stuff enough? :D

By the way, if any dev sees this review: Why is there only one type of cheese in game at the moment? Where are the stroopwaffles?!!

There's plenty of types of items to cook and craft, plenty of resources and you can have your own garden, as well which hey, if you plan on playing the game on very hard or hard, then garden is definitely the first work station you should unlock. It will save you so much money along the way because seeds replenish.

There's also a missions board with requests that you can fulfill for extra money, which helps if you're in a tight spot with money. There's seasonal quests, various events that influence the market, you can play around and experiment with prices, you can overpay your employee kids to make them happier.

I sincerely hope that the devs continue updating the game, even if they decide to put additional content into DLCs. I'm getting them all if that means more items to sell, larger shops, etc. Speaking of which, what I would REALLY REALLY want to see in these updates:
- more basic resources, like milk(!) There's no milk, but there is cheese. Eggs, where are the eggs?!
- there's apples and blueberries, so more fruit variety would be nice: strawberries, apricots, pears, grapes
- alcoholic beverages. Where's the beer? The wine?
- definitely more dairy products!
- mushrooms and more herbs would be nice for more alchemy recipes
- more meat types and recipes
- precious metals and jewelcrafting
All these types of items should be easy to implement, as it wouldn't require coding additional game mechanics.

More advanced stuff that I'd love to see, but I presume requires more complex game mechanics:
- character traits/skills for the employees. Currently they have speed , carry capacity and salary, but hey, it would be nice if we could get them to have more personality AND i would love it if i could task them to tend for the freaking garden.
- character types/traits for customers would be nice, too. Maybe have guilds of blacksmiths, alchemists and farmers who would pay more for specific types of products.
- king requests that impact the shop positively/negatively
- weather that influences farming / season specific crops... And OMG, i just realized there's no tulips in game. AAaaaa!!

All in all this game is a gem in its genre and I will continue to push it upon my friends, with the hope that as more people buy it, we'll get more awesome content. Now if you excuse me, I have a shop to tend to :D

I recommend you buy it only if you are a filthy casual like myself. If you like experimenting with different character and class builds, you don't rage quit a game when you lose by a hair and get super excited when you can afford to upgrade a character's gear, then you'll have a blast with Gladiator Guild Manager! The visuals are nice and cartoonish, although things do get PG13 gory, the voice acting and storylines are funny and there's plenty of gladiator classes and gear to mix and experiment with.

Took me 53 hours to get all achievements, but I bet a more determined individual would've taken far less to do so.

I'm recommending this game only if we're judging it as a game that came out in 2014. In that sense, it will give you enough to do for 4-6-10 hours, if you're OCD about struggling to balance the resources of a colony destined to die anyway.

After 13 hours of playing, I somehow managed to grow my town to a population of 1,634 people { 1,404 adults, 116 students and 114 children }. Only 47% of them are educated, which might explain why I've cluttered several cemeteries with dumb stonecutters crushed by rocks...

I feel like everything I like about the game eventually I end up hating:
- I like the simplicity of it, but then I wish there were more buildings/occupations for my villagers to work in. At the moment I have about 100 laborers who just carry stuff and clean up areas where I am trying to expand.

- I like the fact that there's a bunch of fruits and veggies that my farmers can cultivate, yet aside from the fruits and wheat used on alcohol, I have no idea how the rest of them influence my colony. I wish we had an indicator for how much each type of produce influences the quality of my villagers' lives.

- I like the fact that I can play forever (I am currently on year 88), but I feel like it's a drag to get to the 100 and 200 years milestones necessary for two of the achievements. This is a horrible way to pad the gameplay time in order to keep people playing if they're achievements completionists.

- I like the fact that I can herd sheep, cows and chickens, but this is a medieval colony management game... where's the pigs?! Give us horses and carts so that people can travel faster and carry more goods.

- I like the overall look and atmosphere of the medieval village, but I wish we had more than just churches and taverns to entertain the community. I am aware that you can mod the game, but I won't bother with it since there's no long-term goal of the game.

- I like the fact that the seasons change and that impacts food production, but if you have a few hundred people, you will burn through your veggies and meats super fast. I wish we had bears and boars and other wildlife to give more meat than deer do.

What I clearly don't like:
- Having no clear indicators of how much food each farm/orchard/fishing dock/hunter/pasture gives, I feel like stocking on food is a guessing game.

- After the 50 years mark, I feel like my population gets hit by calamities too often.

- Stonecutters and miners die way too often in work-related accidents. I'm surprised hunters don't die in accidents or fishermen don't drown.

- We have corn and wheat, but no mills and bakeries to produce bread or cornbread.

- No vineyards. Also, no difference in what you use to make alcohol (you have stuff like what, berries, cherries, plums, peaches, etc, but what's really the point?). I wish we had wine, not just ales.

- Traders still bring seeds to sell, even after you've unlocked all types available in game. Sometimes this is super annoying, as you will rely on trade to balance your resources intake/outtake.

- Quarries are horrible. Once you've depleted the stone in them, you're left with giant craters that render the land plot useless. I have 8 of those and they look depressing. My village is beginning to look like a Moon colony with all the craters.
Same issue with mines.

- Since we have mines, I wish we could extract gold or silver and mint coins. Makes more sense in trading than being at the mercy of however much of a specific resource each random traders wants in exchange for their goods.

- My idiot villagers pop out children like crazy. It's cool that they'll replace everyone who will die of old age, but I feel like I'm a race to build more housing than anything else. Then build farms to feed them, then hope nothing wrong happens with the crops or farmers, so that I can actually collect the food they so rapidly deplete.


So yeah, fun game if you like to torture yourself. Bring a pencil and paper, because you'll be pausing a lot to do guess-work math about food management.

I can't believe I spent the last 4 hours of my life reading extensive pre-battle prep guides to make sure my character doesn't die to the final boss in hardcore (permadeath) mode in an idle game...