Скорошни рецензии на Kid

I have dabbled in some walking-sim and visual novel type games before but none have ever held my attention in the same way that Until Then has this last week.
Every once in a while I get a craving for a game that can make me cry, and when I stumbled across Until Then during the summer sale I bought it in blind faith:
Like obviously this was the exact thing I was looking for. Having not read any reviews nor done any research before purchasing it I assumed it would be another 2-3 hour existential game like one of my favorites Before Your Eyes. And while it delivered on the existential melancholia I was anticipating, at the 3 hour mark the story was still going strong... Then as I thought it was wrapping up around the 6 hour mark it took an unexpected detour and here I am 20 hours later regretting none of it.

I hesitate to talk much about the game because I feel that it was such an amazing experience to go into blind and I don't really want to rob anyone of that. But it was such a beautiful story of friendship, loss, forgiveness and acceptance. I feel like I just walked out of the theater after a really good movie and I'm still awestruck even after taking the time to sit through the entire credits processing what I just experienced.

I do have a bit of criticism. There were consistent audio and control issues that seemed to become more prevalent the longer a game session persisted. I circumvented these by just restarting the game every few chapters and it mostly ran smoothly, not to mention the devs already patched out one issue I was experiencing so I have faith the game will continue to become more stable in the coming weeks. I also thought that the conclusion could have tied up more lose ends in the mystery that prevails throughout the entire story, but ultimately it was a satisfying and masterful narrative experience. I wouldn't be surprised if I spent another 20 hours to ride this emotional roller coaster again one day.

Needed to leave a positive review because I've really been loving it.

First off I would like to say I do not think that the timer ruins the game, I quite enjoy the sense of urgency and looming peril it lends to the game.

I love the art and the ambiance but honestly the gameplay takes the cake.

I've only played 3 of the characters so far but each one of their designs is so interesting and engaging. And when including the way that the skill upgrades completely augment the way you play the character, even though I have primarily focused on one character, each game feels new and interesting.

I also love how MEATY the combat is. It feels like every enemy is an actual threat and not just another thing for you mow down on you're way to the boss. But having stronger enemies doesn't make it feel impossible due to the generous amount of revives you are allowed each run.

The only thing that has really bothered me so far is unlocking new items has led to it being harder and harder to find the items I want from the chests in the game. When I first started playing and only had the base set I felt like I could semi-reliably get or even stack the items I wanted from chests, but as I unlock more and more its feeling a bit RNG. Its to the point where sometimes I will just avoid chests to go for gold or books since they provide much more reliable upgrades.
The weird thing tho is I don't even know that I want it to change. Like if I could get the items I wanted reliably it feels like it may take away from the experience in some way.

idk end of rant

All in all I love the game so far, keep up the great work!
Looking forward to future updates.

Edit: Oh also the tome timer needs a better indicator for when all the mobs are going to disappear. It feels like a lot of the time I run out of time and had no idea it was about to end.

And it seems like there may be a problem with attack indicators on steam deck.

THE GAME:

Going into Monster Slayers I was skeptical. The art looked low quality, the music had low sound quality and was a very short and somewhat annoying loop. And all together it looked to be a less polished slay the spire. And for the most part that's exactly what it was! And yet, it was still very entertaining. I found myself so entranced by the simple game loop that I forgot to go to my classes today.

So, getting down to it. Monster Slayers is a deck building roguelite that play somewhat similar to Slay the Spire, you are put in a dungeon with limited paths to choose from and either run into a merchant, treasure, an enemy, or a few other npcs that can build your additional stats. Unlike Slay the Spire you have a skill tree and equippable items that you keep between runs. While you can slowly learn more optimal deck builds the transfer of items will help you more reliably progress from run to run.

PROS:

- 12 playable classes (starts out with 6 and the additional 6 are earned by beating the game with each of the original 6 classes)
- Skill tree allows for easier progression and some customization for how you want to play
- Game is simple and easy to pick up

CONS:

- Game is possibly too simple, not much customization of decks to make different play styles. It feels like every run you should just minimize the amount of cards in you deck instead of building a larger strategic deck.
- The graphics are not great.
- The music and sound quality are less than stellar
- Items bought from merchants in the dungeon can't be equipped (as far as I can tell) until after you leave the dungeon
- It doesn't feel very doable to be able to beat it on the first run through. By this I mean I feel like you HAVE to level up the skill trees and have items earned in past runs to be able to succeed. Optimally it would still be possible to succeed on your first try though it would be harder. I didn't feel like it was even possible on my first run.
- You have to recustomize a new character after every death. I would prefer an option to use my same character and they just reset to level 1 instead of having to recreated them over and over.

CONCLUSION:

In conclusion I think this game could be a good use of $9 and would be of even more value if you can get it on sale. If you loved Slay the Spire and would be interested in a more casual deck builder to scratch that itch then this game is for you.
Solid 7/10

Narrative:
The narrative is an excellent commentary on learning to live with anxiety as well as touching on some other mental health issues through the side characters introduced through out the game. In the game Madeline is trying to climb Celeste mountain but is met with resistance from her personified anxiety. As she progresses towards her goal she learns how to better live with her insecurities.

Music:
Celeste has incredible music. Each track is beautifully and carefully crafted to invoke specific narrative feelings. Additionally the (frequently) calm music helps to cool you down when the game is frustrating you with constant deaths.

Gameplay:
Celeste is possibly the most speedrunnable game I have ever played. While you can make it all the way through the base game with simple movement there is an underlying system that allows you to greatly vary and expedite your movement through each level. The movement is fluid, exact, and I never felt like it was the game mechanics that caused me to fail but instead that I did it wrong. Opposed to "floatier" games like super meat boy where it can be upsetting sometimes because it doesn't feel like your character does what you want it to do.

The platforming is rather innovative compared to most other platforming titles. Instead of continuous stages that you must complete in one go, Celeste splits stages into small screens, each screen acting as a check point. This allows for much harder and more interesting platforming without having the frustration of having to restart completely if you make one mistake. Additionally Celeste includes a climbing mechanic with stamina that allows for many interesting platforming puzzles as well as numerous methods to complete each level.

Conclusion:
I have only 33 hours on steam but also 150+ hours on my switch. The game has insane replay value, loads of additional content for those that want a challenge after the base game, and is 100% worth the asking price. I would recommend it to anyone I know.

TL;DR: FYQD found the perfect way to ensure that no one will refund their game that is not even released yet. While the game has some potential there is no promise that they will seize the opportunity and deliver a better finished product.

Bright Memory is really interesting as a marketing strategy. FYQD has released a low priced but very small section of their unfinished game with the promise of receiving the full game on release if you bought (and keep) it. The game can be finished in about 40 minutes. This allows for an easy refund for those that thoroughly did not enjoy it but traps those that had mixed feelings about the game in an uncertain state of limbo.

Personally I thought the game was an interesting demo, and if it had been presented as a demo for the 10 dollar full game, I would have finished the demo and tried the full game for 2 hours to decide if it was truly worth it. However, by only releasing an enticing but ultimately shallow demo of a game that will most likely be more expensive on full release I am stuck trying to predict whether the full release will be better or just an elongated version of the same combat that was quickly becoming repetitive in only 40 minutes.

If the game is not improved it would be a neat couple hour experience, but I would not want to play much more than a couple hours of it. On the other hand, if the game is improved there is no guarantee how long it will be and may run too short still (especially since the dev team is so small I do not expect a very large amount of content).

GAMEPLAY
The game quickly grew boring. It played like a first-person hero-shooter souls-like, except lacking any of the depth that you would normally see from a hero-shooter or souls-like game. There were only a couple of abilities of which should be used on cooldown with not much room for tactical timing and strategies. While you could unlock a couple new skills, there was only one set of weapons you could use, which were all available from the start of the game allowing for no interesting builds. The enemies were very predictable and all could be beat by the same run and gun tactics. While in other souls likes you carefully time your rolls to avoid attacks during during the rolls iframes, the dodge in this game is best used whenever its up to consistently strafe backwards from the enemy. And the worst part of the game in my opinion is the egregiously long loading screen that you most wait through on every death. Dying to an enemy or even failing a jump can result in a 10-30 second loading screen just to spawn you at the beginning of the room again.

In conclusion it was an alright 40 minutes, but I have my doubts that the full release will be a game that I'll wish to play. I do not feel comfortable recommending a 10 dollar 40 minute demo that seems designed to make sure nobody can get a refund on essentially a pre-order.

I was a fan of the original turbo pug, it was a charming and simple game to waste a bit of time, this however is just a cash grab.

The music is worse, the game play is worse, it is riddled with bugs, and it takes 3 times as long to unlock all the playable characters, which makes a game that's already not that much fun start to feel like torture.

If you are choosing between this and the original turbo pug go with the first one.

I hate leaving reviews when I have hardly played a game but I couldnt stand this any longer. I own the full version of this game and while I was not that interested in the rts parts I thought the controlling specific soldiers in first person sounded really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cool.

Boy was I wrong tho.

This game does first person worse than any other game I have ever played (and I've played a fair deal of grass simulator). the gun play is terrible, the animations are awful like ugandan knuckles bad, the movement is clunky, the graphics are pretty bad (just very plain and no character to them, sometimes this type of aesthetic is in bigger fps games but they usually make up for it in quality of graphics (render wise) and animations that are actually good), and even the controls have a feeling of everything being misplaced.

Perhaps I will come back and try it again when Im in the mood for more RTS centric gameplay but there was so much wrong in my first impression of this game that it pushed me right back out the door that I had just entered.

Interesting idea, flawed execution.
4/10

A poor mans portal knights
time based crafting is obnoxious and if you have 15 bucks portal knights is more worth

Armello has a strong boardgame feel to it as you play as one of many animal characters trying to claim the throne of the dying king whos going insane. The game is very diverse presenting you with 4 different methods to winning and 3 decks of cards that you can play as magic, equip, or set as traps around the map to make the game more interesting. Games last about 30-40 minutes from my experience and are pretty fun. If your a fan of civ games you may like this, it feels kind of like a faster paced civ game mixed with elements of settlers of catan and a few other board games. Im not a huge board game person and have hundreds of games I still need to play before I should buy more so I will not be purchasing it after its free week, but if you enjoy civ and enjoy rpg board games I think you may very much enjoy this game as well.

(TL:DR at bottom)

Brawlout is a platform fighter game that appears to be strongly influenced by games like smash bros and brawlhalla. There are a few things I thought were pretty cool about the game, the graphics look really nice and seem to be really well optimized as my pc could run the game on max setting at about 400-600 fps the whole time. The character design is pretty interesting too with strongly cohesive kits that fit stick to and make use of the characters look to create an imersive fighter.

However there are many more things about this game that just didnt make it stick for me and made me want to stop playing. First the player base is very small taking around 5 to 10 minutes just to find a short 3ish minute match, this is not something that is really the developers fault and may improve over time but as of now online play just doesnt seem that fun because it takes twice as long to find a match as it does to play one. Next in single player vs cpu there are no differences in difficulties to my knowledge making it so once you've mastered beating the cpus it is no longer challenging and as I said with the queue times earlier its not even very worth it to switch to online multiplayer. Third, their are very few character (which is expected mostly of early access) but they claim that they plan to add two or three more by release, that will total in around 10 characters. Arguably that could be enough for I fighting game since games like lethal league thrive with only 6, but the magnitude of competetive play this strives for versus lethal league is very different as lethal league is meant to be a much simpler game at its core. The amount of characters put into this game doesnt even take much time to learn them all. Once again without higher cpu difficulty levels and with sluggish online play I believe this game would benefit greatly from at least having more characters game like smash start you out with around 30 characters to play allowing for much better replayability as you learn to master all of the different character and playstyles. Further more and this may be purely my personal opinion but the movement in this game feels a little clunky whether with controller or keyboard the characters feel rather unresponsive often resulting in a move executing to late, not at all, or the wrong move happening. Lastly another personal opinion is I dont care for the way abilities chain, it feels like there are to many true combos in this game with no frames for recovery in between with these inescapable combos and nearly map wide moves like those seen on king apu and gancho puncho the gameplay seems kindof broken and slightly unfit for competitve play.

I very well might try this game again in the future once its out of early access but as for now I do not think this game is worth playing as what it does games like smash and brawlhalla still do better and with higher player bases.

Good luck to the development team, I'll be back.

TLDR:
Character design and game optimization are solid, but between clunky gameplay, broken abilities and combos, lack of depth to cpu fights, and low playerbase game is not worth in its current state.