Recent reviews by ConstructReese

TLDR: White Knuckle is an incredibly stressful, fast paced climbing game at first, where you will fail and fail and fail. Over time, it becomes an almost meditative experience as you find routes that work for you, items that help you more, and overall become more familiar with the mechanics.



White Knuckle is a game that I played the demo of a decent amount of time ago, and the demo had such a ridiculous amount of content and replayability that I thought "Well, if I'm getting this much out of the demo I guess I should buy the game." When I started getting into my first or second run of the early access release I was only thinking "Well. I should have bought this a long time ago.

White Knuckle excels in its gameplay and atmosphere, combining to be a very dangerously addictive game. With scattered lore notes, cryptic images on floppy drives, weird alternate paths, and other oddities, White Knuckle rewards the player for finding their own fastest routes through each 'tile' in a given run, while also rewarding players for taking their time to explore each nook and cranny.

The OST and sound design combine to create an isolating, gritty, rusty soundscape that keeps you wanting more. There's not many games that have me type out the words "I love the crunch sound the lemon roach makes," but every sound is very lovingly created to express the exact emotion necessary (to use the 'lemon roach' for example, a gross crunch and chew sound because yuck you're eating a bug, but it's a buff that makes you stronger, so it's not too gross of a crunch, almost like a really crisp piece of lettuce or a really crunchy chip. But it's also kind of yucky! Because that is a bugs you're eating!!)

The community in and of itself is a joy to be in. I'm weary to join discord servers for a single game, but joining the White Knuckle server was an incredible choice. The main devs are constantly active and are extremely approachable and nice, often willing to talk about anything when they're around. I feel like it's rare to see creators be on the same level as their fans in such a natural way, and the other fans are extremely kind and welcoming as well, eager to offer tips and motivation for new climbers and climbers who want to get better times or better scores.



When starting the campaign of White Knuckle, you have a single instruction given to you. Escape. Of course, there's a tutorial, delivered as a training course for new employees of this strange superstructure you've found yourself in, but once you get to the main campaign, you can only climb. You can only escape. Escaping from what at first isn't exactly clear, even though it is right below you in the starting room, but as you climb, and fall, and climb, and fall, and fall, and climb more, you realize the mass of writhing flesh following you. So you climb faster, and you fall, and climb, and fall. One of those falls you will fall too far, and become part of the mass.

So you get up and you climb again.

One of the things I think White Knuckle excels in is player expression, and the cycle of climbing, falling, dying, climbing, falling, dying, etc. slowly shapes how the player will start taking routes. Maybe for one person they're going too fast and falling by running out of stamina. They could, in theory, reroute some tiles in order to go by a food can, or even a hidden pill bottle and adrenaline shot, bypassing climbing items such as pitons and rebar. Maybe another person takes it slow, exploring every corner of every tile. Even then, their exploration is rewarded with climbing items, food items, and roaches to fuel that exploration even more. If you look at high level White Knuckle players, you'll see that they're able to fly through the game with incredible precision, only picking up what they absolutely need, and I do think anyone is able to reach a point where they're flying through levels in their own routes, picking up only what they need to go faster, and to escape.



Not about the game specifically, but I do need to give a very big shoutout to the community for White Knuckle one more time. The devs are frequently active in their own discord, making jokes with everyone, while also being happy to answer questions regarding the development cycle of the game and the inner workings of a lot of things. Everyone I've come across, especially those who have been playing for a long time, are very supportive and energetic about the game, and they all push each other to greater heights and greater scores, whether that's through advice for the game itself, advice on a player-to-player basis, or through posting their own runs and discussing them.

I've been following the development of Brickadia for a long, LONG time now, since around it's Alpha 4 release 5+ years ago, so it's really incredible to see it releasing in early access, and to be such a strong game as well. Without a doubt blockland inspired, but with a stronger and much more active community that I feel will only grow over time as people discover and learn the extents of the logic systems and how players can interact with the environment. If you're not too keen on building, there's a ton of user created maps and worlds in the gallery to explore and play on, and there's new servers popping up every day. I feel like every time I jump into a private or even public freebuild and start putting stuff together, I've spent an hour prototyping 6 different things. You GOTTA get your bricj on, i can't lie to you

Nuclear Throne is one of the ultimate Classics of Gaming. One of the most fun and fast-paced roguelike's (roguelights? roguemights? i forgot the correct term. you know though) out there. I was absolutely obsessed with this game in high school and revisited it recently because of the 60/120fps beta patch they released. Still feels absolutely incredible to play there's not a whole lot else to say. Phsish

YIIK: I.V might be one of my favorite games, and if not one of my favorite games, it's definitely one of the most impactful games I've experienced.

I think I had a similar experience as most people with Yiik, where the game was laughed at and ridiculed relentlessly online on it's initial launch, so much so that it wasn't really a game, but more just a meme to laugh at. But I saw my friend streaming the I.V. update and hopped in, and was instantly asking questions, keeping track of what's happening, analyzing our favorite protagonist Alex like a specimen in a lab. I was taken aback at how interesting this story was, and how unique it's presentation was, and even more so when stumbling across Hellkrai's analysis videos on the first game, where there's a distinct point made that the analysis was based on the first version of the game. I had no idea that the story always had this much depth to it from the very beginning, and it had gone passed up and laughed at for years until it finally got a second breath with I.V.

I.V. improves on many aspects of the original game, one of which is the gameplay itself. I personally haven't played the original version, but I know the combat was rough and slow. That is not true at all with I.V's Karta system. Throughout the multiple breakthroughs I've done and watched of I.V., I feel like I rarely saw the same Karta decks or party layouts. Deciding when to discard your karta for its active effect vs. when to keep it around and try to keep it healed up to get as much out of its passive as you can, there's a lot of depth between cards, and even more-so when incorporating character specific abilities/passives (e.g. Rory being a pacifist who only counter attacks getting multiple attack/crits up to be a strong glass cannon, buffing Michael before blinding the party for his mechanic and turning into a one-shot machine).

The edits made to the story and its presentation are astounding. Some of the most cinematic shots I've seen from a game, and they had me and my friends discussing each cutscene to death, and each story beat. There's so much that can be learned from as early as the first alex monologue, and even moreso with what follows. One example that stands out (that will be spoilered, just to be safe, but it's from the cutscenes in the factory hotel section of the story at the beginning), is that during one of Alex's monologues, he ask's Sammy where she's from, and she responds that she's "from here, where else?". Alex takes this to mean that she lives in the factory, but what I think she's actually saying is that she's from Alex's mind, as all of his monologues take place in a place in his own head.

I don't want to say too much, but play the demo to see if you vibe with the gameplay and presentation, as it shows the first chapter of the game (including the first of many Nameless Child sections), and lets you play a little bit with the karta system. We love you Alex Yiik, and thank you Allanson's for such a solid game!!

https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/app/2863840/YIIK_Nameless_Psychosis/

i think this might be one of the best fighting games to exist

yay weee hahaha yay wee weee

took me like 40 hours in game to launch a rocket but it ruled

This truly is the Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony

Good port only downside is the load times are so quick that you can't practice your moves

I REALLY want to enjoy NECROPOLIS. It had a lot of potential, the trailers made it look great, and I love the art style. I'm usually not too quick to buy new games, but since one of my friends suggested we play it together, I thought "Why not?" The first 30 minutes to about an hour of gameplay was pretty fun, but the issue comes in after that hour.

After you've played this game for about an hour, you'll start to realize there's no real difference in any of the weapons, shields, or armors. Some of them may block more damage, but all in all, most of the weapons are the same, just reskinned versions of other weapons. Some of the armors look cool, but have no real functionality it felt like. The areas all look about the same, and you end up going through the swamp area about 6 times in a playthrough. Seeing a new area was pretty cool, but when you find it theres nothing that new there to explore. There might be a few chests with potions and crafting supplies, but besides that it's just mostly the same enemies that were in the areas previous to that one.

For a game that calls itself a roguelike, I feel like I can't come back to play this like I can with other roguelikes, because theres no real end goal besides reaching a portal. The end "boss" was a joke, and was just a big enemy with a lot of health, and once you kill him you can go into the final area, which is just a portal which fades away, and starts the credits. The only reason to come back and play this game would be if you wanted all the codex's (?), or if you wanted to unlock more colors, but for the price of $30 dollars, I can't really reccomend this to anyone. It feels like an early-access game, and if I were thinking of buying it, I would wait for the price to go down.