Recent reviews by MysticalEric

This is a fun rogue-like with a cool atmosphere.

I'm very early in, so I can't comment on general difficulty or the "Quasimorph" side of things. But the what I've played so far has been fun. It can seem tough at first, as death comes quickly to the unprepared. Once you learn the basics of surviving your first mission, you can then start to really enjoy the game loop.

The best part about Quasimorph is that losing a character is impactful, but not the end of the world. I find that some rogue-likes lean too hard on character progression, so that dying feels like a campaign-ender that you need to avoid at all costs. This punishes the player for experimenting, but Quasimorph encourages you to learn by doing.

There's a lot of interlinking systems at play, but it never feels overwhelming while you're in the game. It just seems like there are an interesting array of problems with a wide variety of solutions, that you either plan for before the mission or improvise in the moment.

For example, I took on a 'Defence' mission where you needed to defend an outpost from a PMC attack. I outfitted my character with heavy armour, a light machine gun, and enough medical supplies to stock a small hospital. I survived the assault, but was informed that before the mission was complete, I had to kill the last two surviving PMC soldiers.

Killing them would be easy, as my armour was basically impenetrable and my LMG still had one full magazine left. The difficult part was finding them out in the darkness, lugging around my heavy kit while the effort starved me to death. I could either drop the gear that was weighing me down to save precious calories, or cut up the corpses of the fallen with a machete for shameful sustenance. Well. I was hardly going to go out there unarmed, right?...

Try the game yourself, before you judge me.

A very fun and rewarding game. WASTED manages to be an engaging experience without resorting to XP bars or skill trees to convey a sense of progress.

While the game gives you many oppurtunities to stockpile essential equipment and abilities, it remains entirely possible to complete a dungeon run with a complete blank slate of a character. Experience of the enemies you will encounter, the gear you may find and the usual layout of the generated levels are usually all you need to excel. Every life is a chance to progress and every death is a hard lesson learnt.

A short, entertaining vignette. Well worth the 20 mins I put into it.

It may be only a quarter of an hour long and roughly 600mb in size but it packs in more charm and character than your average big-budget release. I can't wait to see what this studio brings out next.

Uneventful and slow.

The gameplay is extremely repetitive. This would be acceptable if the story could hold its own but the characters are bland and the consequences for the player's actions are unfulfilling.

It is essentially a soap-opera played by 3 one-dimensional characters in a single house. Every cliche "issue" that could be experience by a white, middle-class, suburban nuclear family is covered in the duration of the game. It falls down to the player to decide which member of the unlikable trio deserves some kind of help in their endeavours. Each character has something they want to do or want someone else to do.

As the player, it is your duty to scour the house for glowy things to press space on and then read whatever clue it holds within. All the clues are a simple rewording of the same message; Dad wants to work on his book so he can provide for his family, Mum wants to be more independant, Kid wants to build a sandcastle or some other meaningless drivel. Once you've found all the clues you can make you decision and find out the consequences (The results of your hard work are usually more whining on the family's part) and do the same thing all over again, except with different glowy clues in different places. This process continues on and on, with little to no character development or indication of story progression, it's just more problems popping up like moles in a whack-a-mole.

If you even manage to reach the end, it's highly unlikely that you'll want to go in for round two. In my advice: don't buy this.

Fast-paced and very satisfying to play.

If you've played the free flash version then you've pretty much played this. I expected more levels and stuff but all that the paid version adds is customizable planes, full-screen, and a spooky hard mode for masochists.

In short: not worth getting if it isn't on sale.

P.S they forgot to code an 'Exit to Windows' button and there are no graphics options whatsoever.

10/10