Recent reviews by The Sad Snail

Rock solid tower defense that just explodes in complexity. Building up the tower is fun and rewarding, and the arsenal of turrets you build up allows for some really creative combos. Would have loved to know more about the warlock inhabiting the tower and who's so hell bent on tearing it down :)

Whether you're here out of a love of HOMM or TBS games in general, you won't be disappointed in any way.

It's a charming, deep and really polished strategy game, with unit synergies, a deep and rewarding spell system, and a bit of town management. Also the game looks gorgeous, animations have oompf and units are just fun to use. Early access done right. This isn't nostalgia talking, it's a solid game as it is.

Can't wait to see where the team takes it.

march 14 2022: I'm changing my review to negative. Lately me and my friends have been getting constant connection errors. We cannot reliably play together. I'll change it back to positive when this is fixed.

World & Lore

• You get the usual edgy worldbuilding, but this time it's more nuanced. There's bleakness, color, humour and quirkiness mixed up in a memorable adventure. Giant crustaceans, frog people, sentient battle pots (???) and talking turtles will remind you that you're not in Dark Souls anymore. And that's a very-very good thing. Very.
  
  
• Although it's brighter in terms of color palette, the apparent darkness just makes the dark bits darker. If dark souls was the story of a corpse world, this is the story of a pretty world with a festering, gangrenous and cancerous wound.

Massive Scope

• The world is absolutely huge. It's easy to get lost in it. For those of you wanting a classic "go from point A to point B", bring a notepad. Or in fact, look somewhere else. No handholding here.
  
  
• For those of you who like roaming around and stumbling over ruins, enemies, bosses, characters, factions and items, you're in heaven. It's not just big for a souls game, it's big for an open-world game. And every time you think you've grasped the scope of the world, it just gets a little bit bigger.

Friendly Souls

• It's easier for players unfamiliar with the series to get into the game.
  There's very little gating. If you get stuck, just go somewhere else. Long gone are the days of Iudex Gundyr.
  
  
• it's easy to form parties and get the extra help you need. So if you get stuck in a particular place, just form a party.
  
  
• other souls titles might get flak from players wanting to do coop only. At the moment, while PvP is still a part of the game, the Invader (attacking player) is always going to be outnumbered. If you're a pvp guy and you're reading this, be ready to play dirty, cuz odds are stacked against invaders.

Combat is bigger and better

• First off: horse. You get a mount and mounted combat is fun. Mounted enemies are fun to fight against.
  
  
• Enemies are more aggressive and are rarely on their own. They're always found in groups, they fight together and they usually complement each other: melee units, casters and ranged enemies all fight together. So you'll have to be a bit smarter.
  
  
• They added stealth, so you can try to go all sneaky-like when the odds are stacked against you. Take out buglers, casters or captains first. You'll find camps with buglers that sound the alarm, at the sound of which units will group together to face you.

The nasty stuff

• Performance: You better be on the upper end of the spectrum. FPS drops in certain areas and situations will make you unhappy. You will feel unhappiness as a result of FPS drops.
  
  
• Online: You will also feel unhappiness when you or your friends are randomly
  disconnected, sometimes even during boss fights. Be advised.
  
  
• FPS lock: Personally I don't give a ♥♥♥♥, but I understand people don't like the 60FPS lock. Bear that in mind as well.

Solid and modern city builder, dedicated devs and promising upcoming features. This game is well worth any city builder player's support.

Rich visuals, smooth controls, progressively complex puzzles and a likeable hero, easily a champion of the genre. A finely crafted game well worth the money.

What Pinnical Studio did is basically proof of concept. Proof that the concept of good friends (and company) coming together to make a game works better than anything you could imagine.

The most impressive feat of Tadpole Tales is that everything it sets out to do, it does amazingly and effortlessly. The art is staggering, gameplay is exactly what it should be: tight, responsive and fun, and the soundtrack glues everything together into a wholesome bowl of whimsy and fun. Even the difficulty is right. Overall the quality of this "free to play" title is ridiculously high.

I have no doubt that great things await Pinnical Studio and when the future comes and they'll be up there as lords of Wholesomegamesland, I'll proudly say that I've been one of the first to play Tadpole Tales. I cannot recommend this title hard enough, I cannot stress enough how much this team deserves your support.

Just go and clean the river already!

One of the few well-made survival games with unique mechanics. Broomstick mechanic is really fun, magic system is deep and satisfying and the devs are clearly working around the clock. For a project 2 years-ish in development, it's really well crafted.

It's also the only survival game in which I enjoyed exploring. It has a world that doesn't feel like a litter box of assets with random POIs and actually feels designed.

Also the PVE mode is a breath of fresh air from all the box fortresses and backstabbing that populate survival games.

I will definitely be playing a lot more.

Just got into the game, so far loving it and would definitely recommend it to roguelike/soulslike fans. The art is great, the world feels great and combat is really satisfying. I'll update the review once I get to experience more of the game but so far it's been a lot of fun. I got this game with the Humble RPG Bundle, but it's well worth the full asking price, I'd easily rack it up to 20-25€.

tl;dr
-Really cool art
-Good worldbuilding, lots of flavor and each zone has it's own theme, which I love.
-Fun, fast and deep combat
-challenging enemies
-the choppy frame-by-frame combat "animations" actually feel good

Cons
-I'm not really fond of the dodging system. The character always dodges to the direction of the cursor and I understand the design implications behind it BUT during combat (which can be really fast with split-second dodging, blocking and attacking) I, for one, tend to forget about the cursor, because all you really do with the cursor in combat is switch between the 2 axis on the isometric plain. Diagonal movement tends to be wonky because all attacks fall in either one axis or another, thus making diagonal positioning imprecise. This might not be entirely true, but this is what is seemed like to me. I might get used to it and discard this argument, but this is far my only con.

It can be very frustrating because dodging towards the enemy turns the dodge in a bash, but an unsuccessful bash is painfully punishing, since it leaves you open to the enemy.

But alas, the game is good and I strongly recommend it.

MKW scratches a sweet spot somewhere between the Total War series and Battle for Middle-Earth. So far you get to play as a lord in one of several European factions, with the possibility of becoming the faction leader. You'll be constantly switching between a grand strategy mode and battle/city management mode, both realtime.

The game sports a few interesting design decisions, for instance multi-sided economy, meaning you can either manage your towns from the map view, similar to TW (expanding towns, training units) which that costs Coins OR you can enter the cites themselves in classic RTS fashion and expand and train units using a different set of resources (wood, food, iron, stone), which gives you a more immersive, direct approach to your towns. Moreover actually getting to see your towns is rewarding because they're huge and nicely done (though a bit murky-looking).

The towns are custom designed based on historical maps and layouts, being quite frankly the largest medieval cities I've seen in RTS games, scale being properly done.

City expansion is done through construction sites, which are basically hubs that give you several building, further expanded via research, research done via acquiring trade goods (12 types in total). Trade goods are gained through purchase or as battle loot.

Big battles are commonplace and seeing tens of regiments clashing is satisfying, albeit unit control feels a bit clunky and in the early stages blobbing is the name of the game, early unit variety being low.

Siege battles are where the game shines as cities boast impressive, multi-layered fortifications which are fun to both defend and attack, so if you're into siege warfare and your favorite Battle for Middle-Earth maps are Minas Tirith and Helms Deep, by all means step inside.

Graphics are a bit dated, but the game has charm and atmoshpere.

Moreover there are always Mods and Devs online in the ingame chat which gives you the chance to sit, play and talk with the team itself, which is great.

The game still has to go a long way, but if this is the direction and pace in which things are evolving, you're looking at the next medieval RTS classic.

Also co-op Campaign is underway :D

This game pretty much sums up a lot of things I really like about puzzle games and games in general. The first thing everybody's going to notice is the atmosphere, by which I mean everything art and story related. The world of Black: The Fall is rich and terryfing at the same time. Everything's beautifully and stylishly detailed, a real treat for history buffs who will definetly have a good time spotting the various historical references the game makes,

Gameplay-wise we're talking about a solid puzzle adventure with intricate, hard but rewarding puzzles. The game doesn't hold your hand so every bit of progress you make in this dystopian universe is as satisfying as it can be. The game throws in more than a few mechanics in the mix while also constantly reshuffling the way the player is supposed to use these said mechanics.

A lot of people have pointed out similarities to other titles. As someone who played both Limbo and Inside (the most commonly quoted titles) I can definetly say that Black: The Fall is its own game and some parts of the game possibly offer what I believe to be some extremely memorable, vivid and cinematic moments.

I recommend this wholeheartedly and am eager to see what the devs come up with next.