Recent reviews by Melon Scout

Performance issues aside? *It's good.* If you don't mind exploring the world at 40FPS until further optimization patches are out, this is rapidly looking to be *THE* way to play Oblivion. The first 4 hours are the most fun I've had in an Elder Scrolls game short of QOL-modded Morrowind in OpenMW- better than the original Oblivion, by a long shot, and I'd even go so far as to say better than Skyrim to my tastes.

And I got a free armored horse just for poking my head into the Imperial City's stable. Todd Howard, you've done it again.

This is a dead game and it was dead when I bought it years and years ago. Devs have gotten up to some predatory stuff too. It's a shame, I probably paid a good $20 more than the game is now being asked for, too.

THIS IS A MIXED REVIEW - I don't necessarily recommend buying it due to the scummy publisher behaviour, but it's a good game and the community is actively keeping it alive.

A great game that I've long loved, but ruined by a scummy, predatory publisher. Jalopy is one of the definitive driving sims out there, and its legally-distinct Trabant 601 deLuxe shines bright as one of the most charming vehicles I've had the pleasure of driving- in *or* out of a game, and the soggy, melancholy atmosphere of the post-fall Eastern Bloc is among the best I've seen. But the game is in limbo, abandoned by the publisher who now squats on the code, assets & IP. Instead of allowing the Minskworks team to continue developing, they demanded development end & a sequel be released- and when the team wasn't interested, the game was fully published early and the task of making a "sequel" handed off to other developers in the form of the now-delisted Road to Guangdong, which wrapped itself in advertisements as being from the Jalopy team & in so doing got MInksworks harassed for the game's poor quality.

https://www.eurogamer.net/burnt-out-by-a-collapsed-publisher-relationship-and-abuse-over-a-game-he-didnt-make-the-creator-of-jalopy-is-trying-to-move-on

Jalopy is a good game, and Minkskworks worth supporting- but at this juncture your money will go to yet another scummy publisher not worth your time or respect, let alone in this economy. Get it as cheap as you can, or play off a friend or family member with Family Sharing- and if you have the interest & knowledge of the tools to do so, contribute to keeping Jalopy alive yourself via modding! Development on the tools are ongoing- new commits within the past week as of this review's writing in Apr 2025. https://github.com/theLeaxx/JaLoader

Pretty, charming, and clearly made with the same love and wanderlust that defines Outer Wilds' beautiful worlds. Full of potential and pretty little scenes- and for just a few bucks, it's supporting an indie dev making something beautiful. No fancy mechanics, just a pretty little walking simulator ready to make some gorgeous screenshots. Go explore.

The best Warioware we've had in a long time except it's made with the Aether franchise's delightfully charming critters and Lepioid's even more delightfully charming pixel art, *and they made it free for April Fool's*- but even for the $3 asking price it's worth it. I have *missed* this style of game, and it's FULL OF CRITTERS. Now all I want is Dreams of Aether DIY to fully go down the nostalgia route...

80 hours on Steam, 40 more on mobile, gigantic stacks of playing cards & a box of poker chips at my side to fidget with. Balatro has brainrotted me horrifically and in a good way. Gold Stake might be suffering but you're missing out if you haven't played this yet. Send Jimbo your well wishes and your friends, he needs them.

Another preventable death, another CEO paycheck. MultiVersus had a lot of potential in its early days but crummy monetization and a greedy publisher have killed the game outright.

This could be avoided if we demanded an end to live service games that die when the publisher's CEO wants another bonus. Scrolls is still alive long after Mojang abandoned it because of the hard work of a handful of passionate devs converting it into something that could be forever iterated upon & evolved by its community. MultiVersus could get this treatment too. Most dead live services could.

Pour one out for Player First, Monolith, and WB San Diego. So much potential wasted for corporate greed.

This is rapidly shaping up to be one of the greats of the Balatro-adjacent Roguelite Deckbuilderized game of chance genre alongside the likes of Aotenjo, Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers, and of course Balatro itself. It's free, it's fun, it's consuming my thoughts alongside all the other greats in the genre- you're doing yourself a disservice not at least giving this demo a try.

Calling this Balatro with Mahjong isn't doing it justice. Despite being in very early access still, Aotenjo has rapidly shaped up to be just as addicting to me as Balatro is - if not perhaps a smidge more so, nailing a lot of the same factors whilst bringing in *vastly* increased possibilities for creative and wacky deck gimmicks of your own creation. I've pushed the Abandoned Deck to its limits in gold stake, building it into everything from Straight Flush setups to infinite Aces, but even the potential it bears fades in comparison to Aotenjo's. With some 100+ patterns to choose from - the vast majority of which can stack together - you can run some truly bonkers gimmicks ranging from familiar concepts like a Pure Straight x Full Flush combo, to all-green mixes based on the actual colors on the tile art, to milling and duplicating one tile so much that you can play a full hand of 4 quads + a pair of just one tile type. Even Jimbo won't let you run an 18-of-a-kind!

With development in progress and an exciting roadmap ahead, I'm really looking forward to seeing where Aotenjo goes next - even as I continue to sink deeper into the pits of Mahjong madness. This is my first true Mahjong-based game and now that those tiles & patterns have their hooks in me, I'm bound to start playing others.

Disclaimer: this would be MIXED if Steam allowed such. If you get this, play blind.

My teeth hurt. My jaw aches. My mouth feels dirty. THRESHOLD's greatest strength is in its atmosphere. Lived-in, grimy, viscerally uncomfortable - especially the canisters that serve as your lifeline. Piecing together story whilst having to keep the train running, marking your rounds about the Outpost with the whistle and the *crunch* of ensuring you're live to see the next cycle through - it's satisfying, yet uncomfortable- but most of all it draws you into the world, the time and place you've inhabited as the new Yellow Clerk. Mo's busy. The Outpost is *yours* now and you're gonna take care of it.

Or not. The game does have its opportunities to make choices. After all, so long as you keep up the minimum of appearances, fresh air keeps coming. You can beeline it for answers without running out of breath. But if you're not careful, you might not like the answers you get...and you might find them far sooner than you had anticipated.

With this...we lead into the bad - THRESHOLD is short, a little too short for its own good. The mechanics; juggling the train, having to manage all these different machines and maintenance tasks far apart from one another, all while every dash between your destinations costs you another precious breath you could be spending the time to replenish - it's genuinely satisfying, especially when you tie trying to progress the story and take care of the Outpost into your routine. But with how short the game is- they never really actually get the chance or time to shine, and neither does the story. My run took about 90 minutes in total after having to restart due to not reaching the first checkpoint.

I walked away feeling like it could've used an extra 30-60 minutes to flesh things out more, or expand the "acts" into a little bit bigger a structure with some more options for player choice to determine how things progress, even if they don't actually end with a ton of impact- *something* would be better than nothing, especially in giving more room for expression before the final "act" rolls around. Let me try to coax Mo on things, call the Capital early, anything - don't wait until the very end to put the player's feet to the fire to make choices and prove their knowledge of the mechanics.

Finally...My biggest disappointment. When the game says it's "based on a true story", it's only loosely so - there's no mountain where you could breathe but not catch your breath, no mystery train lonely Clerks maintained, no real world event the ending is directly parallel to. Rather, it's an allegory - one which is pretty hit-or-miss, and for my part, it's a miss. I'm not the target for it - I don't drink from the River's waters.

Despite this...I still like THRESHOLD. Its atmosphere and the potential it holds, the food for thought it already represents, is enough to outweigh my unhappiness about the way the story turned out. I'm hoping to see some additional developments once they clear out the bugs - a little bit of NG+ content, a little more story to see, a little more time to fight for that last breath - it could make all the difference and change my feelings from mixed to fully positive.

The air is thin up here. Don't drown in it.