Recent reviews by LuckyOwl

Suzy Cube is a game that wears its inspiration on its sleeve, and that isn't a bad thing.

Suzy Cube is heavily inspired by Super Mario 3D Land, and would not be surprised if the game was originally conceived as a hack for that game. The controls are smooth and precise (I played with an XBox 360 controller), so if you take a hit or lose a life it is the fault of the player, not the controls or the level design.

The level design in Suzy Cube is top notch. Just like Super Mario 3D Land, each stage has three collectibles that can be found in secret locations, mini-challenges, or solving puzzles, and check points a generously placed so you never loss too much progress if you lose a life, and a game over only results in you getting booted out of the stage you were playing.

The presentation is simplistic, but charming. I absolutely adore the use of flat colours when they are used well, and Suzy Cube uses them fairly well while also throwing in enough detail to make things not just look like floating untextured cubes in nebulous voids. And the simplicity of the presentation means that Suzy Cube can be ran on basically any PC released within the past few years. The music is the only major weak point of the game since besides the stage victory jingle none of it is really memorable.

So overall, Suzy Cube is a fun little 3D Platformer that knows what is is and embraces it. Fun level design, tight controls, and an overall pleasant presentation all for an affordable price makes Suzy Cube an easy recommendation for lovers of the genre.

After spending some time with Magic Duels, I can say it's "meh" in it's current state. (Really wish Steam would add an "average" rating to Steam reviews. Bloody extremists.) I'll try and keep this short, since there are A LOT of things that need changing and I'm also going to include a few ideas that I think would help improve the longevity of the game.

NOTE: I won't be going into great detail about the network features here since many others have already voiced the issues with them.

Let's start with the positives:

- Full deck customization, including full control of your land base.
- The tutorials can teach anyone the basics of Magic, although doesn't cover the more advanced things such as the stack.
- They actually give you four of each Guildgate two of each "Checkland" (Lands that look for basic land types when they come into play otherwise they come in tapped) after you complete Gideon's campaign.
- You won't get useless copies of cards you already have when you get packs.
- The buisness model is rock solid. More F2P card games should use a similar model.

Now onto the negatives:

- The campaigns after the first one are horribly imbalanced towards the computer's favor. Just look at Liliana's deck in her first campaign match to see what I mean. A new player would NEVER make a deck that terrible.
- The cards you get from the starter box are complete jank besides the land cards mentioned in the positives. It suffers from the same issue that the Deckbuilder's Toolkits have. I don't expect amazing stuff in a starter pack, but when the only standout things in it are the lands it comes with, you done goofed.
- They limit how many copies of a card you can have in a deck by rarity. 4 commons, 3 uncommons, 2 rares, and 1 mythic rare. This isn't new since it was in DoTP15, but it really restricts creativity. I don't absolutely hate this design choice since it helps ease new players into the game, but I'm not a fan of it either.

They need to fix the key issues first, such as the lack of a chat function during 2HG, and not being able to tell if your opponent (Or teammate in 2HG) has disconnected and been replaced with a bot. But the other thing that needs changing is the imbalance in the single player campaign past Gideon's campaign.

A few additions I'd like to see are a progression system for the multiplayer in which as you achieve higher ranks, you gain the ability to add more copies of cards of the higher rarities into your decks. It would incentivize players to play versus matches to increase their rank, and add a better random matchmaking system since all of your oppenents would be at roughly the same skill level by making it so you can only battle players that are a rank higher or lower than your current rank. They could even spread out the rarity cap increases by making it so you only unlock one slot when you reach a specific milestone, with minor rewards in between each major milestone, such as gold, new avatars for you decks, and new backgrounds for your deck boxes.

The other addition that I'd like to see would be that in between the releases of the new sets, they would add the old blocks into Magic Duels. They don't need to add every block and set ever released, but maybe add a few to increase the card and deck variety.

While I will still play Magic Duels for the time being, I do not recommend playing it at the time of writing this review.

First things first: THIS GAME DESERVES YOUR MONEY! Don't wait and buy it when it is on sale, that would be doing a disservice to not only Yacht Club Games and Shovel Knight, but also yourself (This may or may nit be true).

Now with that out of the way, let's start with my review.

Story:
Shovel Knight puts you in the shoes of the titular character as he travels throughout the land to stop "The Order of No Quarter" and "The Enchantress" with shovel in hand. That is really all that is needed of the plot, since the game is an homage of games past which also lacked in the plot department. This isn't a bad thing, since it has enough of a plot to give you an excuse for the adventure at hand.

Graphics:
Shovel Knight looks beautiful! Fantastic pixel art is on display for the whole journey, with each area having a distinct visual flavour to it. You'll travel to all sorts of fantastical locales, ranging from an ancient underground city to an airship in the skies.
Each member of "The Order of No Quarter" also look fantastic, each having an interesting design to them.

Sound:
For the most part (read: 98% of the game), Shovel Knight has a wonderful chiptune soundtrack, each delightful tune is easy on the ears and you can find yourself humming along to each one. The sound effects are also excellent. They sound great, but never overpower the fantastic music. There was only ever one tune in the whole game I did not like, mainly because it sounded rather generic for where you are in the game.

Gameplay:
The only thing I can say about the controls in Shovel Knight is that they are sublime! Everytime you die, you can tell it was your fault for messing up a jump or taking a hit, not the game being cheap. Each time you die, you lose a portion of you gold, but it will float in bags until you collect them or die again, so you have a chance ro regain you lost gold. By the end of the intro stage, you'll have the basic controls mastered, and the game doesn't even tell you how to do any of the moves so you have to learn to do them on your own. The only thing the game tells you how to do is how to use your current relic, which is classic Catlevania controls (Up+Attack).
Each level is wonderfully handcrafted so that you face a specific set of challenges in each stage. I only got stumped once on where to go in one of the stages because where I had to go looked like a bottomless pit. Each boss fight is unique in how they fight, and there are more bosses than just "The Order of No Quarter" and "The Enchantress".
And unlike a game like Mega Man where you will tend to gravitate to one or two weapons, all the Relics in Shovel Knight are useful in some way or another. One of the first relics you can get is the Fishing Rod, which lets you see sparkling areas above bottomless pits which means you can get something worth while by dropping the fishing line and catching something there. Using the Fishing Rod is also required to get some of the secrets in the game, and there are a lot of secrets.
Each stage is littered with secret areas, be they hidden alcoves or entirely hdden rooms, all of them found with only your wit and some with visual indications (each visual indication is unique to each stage as well). Within these secrets are a plethora of different challenges and rewards, ranging from chests with some bonus gold to new relics. The ones that contain relics have some sort of challenge you have to do in order to familiarize yourself with how the new relic works and to get out safely with all gold intact.
There are two towns in the game, each with NPCs that you can talk to for some cute dialogue to merchants that will sell you various items. Standard town stuff. The world map works just like Super Mario Bros. 3, so it is pretty self explanitory.

Conclusion:
Shovel Knight is perfect in every way. Great controls great soundtrack, great graphics, and is a perfect homage to the games of yesteryear. With only one tiny blemish to speak of in my honest opinion.

So my final verdict for Shovel Knight is to buy it without delay!