Recent reviews by TheUnshaven

I enjoyed the demo of this to the point I *stopped playing it* because I was already sold on the full version and wanted to save the experience for when it was done. I'm glad I did: the demo was impressively polished, but this is even more refined and improved.

Reality Break is an inventive combination of:

- Diablo-style looter, but in SPACE
- Twin-stick combat
- With the ability to use metacurrency to adjust almost anything in the game
- Metaprogression mechanics that mean you can re-set the entire timeline in a similar style to something like Cookie Clicker, but where doing so changes and advances the story.
- And that story seems interested in exploring actual science-fiction timeloop shenanigans rather than having it as a background detail or gimmick!

It's an ambitious pile of things in One Big Jug and I'm very interested to see where it's going. And it's particularly impressive to have come from a single developer.

Chill puzzling and great characters.

It's wonderful to see this finally out in the wild. Defender's Quest is one of my favourite games of all time, and one of the best tower defence games out there, so I've been looking forward to this for a very, very long time: there's nothing else quite like the Defender's Quest series.

If you like tower defence games, this series was one of the first to make your characters into the towers themselves, and DQ2 uses that as a framework for telling a story featuring both White Hat and Black Hat teams operating in the same environment and ricocheting off each other.

I'm looking forward to playing more of it, and hoping the best for its developers/publishers across time from inception to now.

Very well put together and ambitious psychological horror game with good writing and ideas.

Very more-ish and interesting strategy game, and I love that it's about tactics and strategy without me needing to worry about APM or economies. I *also* love that I'm having fun just noodling around in single player matches. I look forward to possible multiplayer at some point, but it's not *necessary* and that was what tipped me into trying it out. The fact there's singleplayer with variation because you can play challenges set by other players is also interesting.

This is a visually beautiful and cleverly designed neon pile of gloriousness that mashes up Missile Command with a bunch of other arcade concepts. You can be trying to shoot down incoming missiles *and* juggling falling asteroids at the same time very rapidly, and it's a lot of fun.

It also has roguelike unlock paths that gradually expand after each run: impressive stuff.

I also love the commitment to the idea it's playing on technology from the 80s that's folded into the menus and UI, like wiping the roguelike-elements being a "factory reset."

It makes me smile. (Because I am old.)

I enjoyed the demo a great deal, and was looking forward to the full release.
It's about cleaning items via minigames and talking to people, and the characters are fun and inclusive.
I've seen some concern that there's no way to 'fail' the game, and that's true but also people love the hell out of "Powerwash Simulator" that does the same thing? I don't see the issue.
It's relaxing, gentle and engaging.

Lots of fun silly entertainment with big explosions, enormous bosses, and fun along the way. There's a demo, so if the phrase "tower defence + twin stick shooter" appeals I recommend checking that out. It'll be far more effective than any review for giving you an idea if this'll be your sort of fun. Personally, I tried the demo and immediately bought the full version, and it's set up so you can just continue automatically without repeating anything! Thumbs up for that.

Wonderful hybrid of Diablo and Vampire Survivors with fantastic bone-shattering sound effects.

This is a very detailed subversion of traditional expand/research/conquer gameplay to create a "postcolonial 4x game."

It's also interestingly meta: it's a game about students PLAYING a game as they work on a research project about a particular historical moment, and research in the game can be progress in that research project.

RPS has good coverage of it here: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/nikhil-murthys-syphilisation-is-a-ferociously-in-depth-empathic-reworking-of-civilization-and-other-4x-games