Recent reviews by MustacheMerlin

Game came out yesterday, I bought it this morning, and I think I've already near 100%ed the game in a single sitting. And actually, that's a good thing! It is a good length, I enjoyed it and didn't get sick of it. I really appreciate when a game doesn't demand an 80 hour time commitment - some folks have jobs, yknow? I would not say no to more though, I really liked it.

Played start to finish on my steam deck an it was a flawless experience, smooth as butter and only a single bug - the witch broom doesn't give a second dash like it says.

I was confused a few times as to delivery targets, particularly the scarf egg lady. just note that only main characters take deliveries and you'll be solid. Some items confused me what to do with them, eg it took me awhile to figure out the blue orbs. I still haven't figured out where to deliver the fish since it's apparently not the old man like the first fish.

in early access the broom is pretty bland to control, but still intuitive and smooth. The real meat of the gameplay is the level design, rather than character abilities, pathing your way through obstacles and navigating a fast route around the island. I was annoyed that all the shortcuts you unlock only work counterclockwise around the island, and are useless going clockwise.

imo even better than their previous games. Cute, pretty art, likable characters (parachute girl is my favorite!). Totally worth the money!

I love this game. It's not a big game - more like something you would find in an arcade cabinet. It's an absolutely awesome arcade game, I think I would definitely have poured quarters into this by the pound. The gameplay is fluid and addicting, the flow state of fighting off hoards and hoards of enemies with just a pistol and a katana feels so badass. Every time I die I instantly rush back in wanting to do better. The art is gorgeous, and the themeing is flawless, it really sells the experience of being a gritty cyberpunk action hero on her last stand, everything just fits together so well towards that aesthetic.

Like I said, I'd dump so many quarters into this at an arcade. $4.99 is a total steal, completely worth it.

Crosscode is the best SNES game never made. It wears it's 16 bit influences proudly for all to see, but isn't a pale imitation of the classics - Crosscode takes those classics and says "Let me show you how it's done, Old Man."

Basically, Crosscode is what the old masters in the 16 bit era wished they could make but couldn't in their time.

The combat system is fluid and responsive, but more importantly *incredibly* varied and dynamic, I think I'd need another thousand hours in this game to master it all. It's simple and easy to pick up, with a skill ceiling I can't see the top of. In terms of combat, I would call it a Character Action game in two dimensions, up there with the top dogs in fast sword-based melee combat like Platinum Games with Nier Automata, Beyonette and Metal Gear Rising, or the big daddy of them all: Devil May Cry. Even despite being constrained to a 2D world of sprites, Crosscode stands up among the greats.

Crosscode's "Spheromancy" combat concept is a masterpiece I will be comparing every other game to from now on, with tight mechanics and smooth, satisfying animations.

There's just something unmistakabley Aesthetic about combat in Crosscode, something special about twirling all over the map as a magic-baseball murder ballerina. Dashing between enemies in a perfect and elegant double corkscrew, gently wrecking everything that moves with grace, poise, and a cybernetic throwing arm that'd make Babe Ruth cry of inferiority, gliding happy loop-de-loops around an enraged hedgehog on an icey lake, wielding all four elements to utterly ruin that thing's day in particular! This is a love letter to Spheromancy, the murder-baseball-ballerina class is a stroke of inspired genius and nothing can convince me otherwise.

I'm a firm believer that the mark of a good game world is when you can just sit there and enjoy simply *being* there. I could spend hours and hours hanging out in Crosscode's starting area, Rookie Harbor, running around, talking to every NPC, exploring every nook and cranny and then doing it all over again to enjoy the atmosphere. The overworld level design is fun and interesting, the navigational puzzles baked into the map where there are paths leading between different zones and you have to figure out the path across the whole area are just hard enough to be intriguing without being frustrating, and they really make you engage with the level in a way that a lot of games utterly fail to do. The map is not there just to be there - it's a play space, and navigating within it is gameplay all by itself.

The characters are likable and engaging, Emilie and Lea are an iconic duo that I never get sick of. I love everyone! Except for purple paintbrush hair guy. Screw that guy, leave my party alone, I guarantee I know way more useless facts about earthworms than he does and than I ever wanted to know and I do NOT want to hear even more from some nerd. And that brings me to another massive point in Crosscode's favor... that guy? You can leave him behind!! Emilie and Lea all the way dude, perfect party. Even if it makes the game way harder. Worth.

On a technical level, Crosscode's engine is fantastic and rock solid, the game feels perfectly polished from the moment you open it. It's a console-like experience, absolutely no PC gaming jank whatsoever or indie developer "I don't have any idea what I'm doing" type problems, no Ubisoft "we'll fix it in a patch later" attitude, it's just pure, unblemished Quality with a capital Q. It feels like a product of good craftsmanship. It's well made, an incredibly refreshing feeling among other modern games. Whoever programmed this game should be proud, they clearly know how to do their job and do it well.

The music is good, but I found the special mode streak music gets repetitive when you're bashing hedghogs for an hour straight running circles around autumns rise to keep fighting because the combat is just THAT good. I did that. I regret nothing. I found and killed Sanic hedgehog in this game and it was amazing.

This game might not be for everyone. But for who it is for, it's the best thing since sliced bread. This is one of my favorite games of all time and I hope that other people will love it too, if you're on the fence, BUY CROSSCODE. In a perfect world this would go up on everyone's list of darling indie titles, right up next to Hollow Knight and Celeste and Stardew Valley. I'd make this part of a mandatory public school education if I could.

Overwatch wishes it was Team Fortress 2

TF2 perfected the hero shooter genre in 2007 and no one has improved on it since. One of the best games money can't buy because it's free, but also just one of the best games period. This game is legendary. There is a reason people like Valve and that reason is Team Fortress 2. Classic and classy, what a good game.

Basically, it's a short comic book told through a minigame format. The minigames aren't anything to write home about, and there...isn't a lot of story here. Basically it's every Hallmark movie ever - Florence is the straight-laced overachieving business type character who has a job but nothing else in her life and is miserable, and Krish is the manic-pixie dream boy with a rebellious and creative streak who shows up and teaches her about stopping to smell the roses and that there's more to life or whatever.

So at least props for swapping the normal genders I guess!

I also respect the very grounded take on adult life, despite the Hallmark plot, you have probably lived Florence's life before. Very real.

It also doesn't last very long, you'll finish it pretty quick. The picture roll at the top of the steam page is actually a pretty big chunk of the game...

That said, it's still unique and pretty good. A little light for a steam game but exactly the right size for a bite-sized mobile game, which is what it is. As a game in the minigame bundle genre like Warioware or Rhythm Heaven, it doesn't stand up. As a comic strip, it also doesn't stand up. But as a crossing of both those things? It's pretty cool, I've never seen anything like it before. I'm reminded of the scene from Ratatouille, where Remi eats the apple and it makes a sound, and then the cheese and it makes a sound - but then both *together* and the screen blows up pink with fireworks and the music swells? Yeah it's like that, more than the sum of it's parts.

Florence is a cool as a comic book that is also a game, their use of interactive elements through minigames as symbolism to explain what's going on in the story and make you participate is a unique format and it's neat for that alone. If you're expecting to have your mind blown by a deep and groundbreaking story, you're going to be disappointed. If you're expecting to have crazy fun with tight controls and engaging gameplay, you'll also be disappointed. But if you're expecting to be wowed by the clever use of gameplay mechanics as storytelling and admire the artistry of the interactive medium... this is the right place.

Good but probably overhyped, temper your expectations and you'll be happy.

A solid "Huh. Neat" out of 10, worth the $2

I don't like rhythm games. I love this rhythm game.

"Proper Rhythm" is a BANGER

This is a short but very nice game. After upgrading your character a little bit the turn based combat becomes very easy, I happened to max out my defense right from the start and barely took damage for the entire game.

My greatest enemy was actually the janky menu more than the mobs - combat doesn't pause for your turn so enemies continue to attack you while you're trying to navigate the menu and just *attack* already. Combined with a very clunky interface that that feels unresponsive because your inputs are locked whenever an enemy's attack animation plays, and that involves many superflous clicks to go through (EG, have to "select a party member" before attacking, when there's only ever the one party member), the menu can make combat slightly frustrating. The rough edges on the menu would be much more forgivable if I didn't have to navigate it on the clock, but it works out in the end because combat is ultimately very easy anyway.

IMO though, this game is much more about it's story than it is about the combat. I think this game came out before Pixar's Soul, but if you've seen that movie, the premise is very similar. Soul was a very good movie. Grimm's Hollow is a very good game. The story is simple and compelling and all of the multiple endings are thorough and satisfying. The story is the heart of this game and it is heartwarming.

Aesthetically the game looks pretty good. They made wise decisions with their limited man power and ended up with some very bang-for-buck art direction. They use a mostly monochrome color palette for example, which means color theory is not a consideration, everything you draw will look good with everything else because it's *all* purple with just a few exceptions. The game is pixel art. The tileset is also mostly solid colors rather than textured details which gives the world a smooth, cartoonish look, and serves to really highlight the things that are given more detail. Icons are cute and simple, wonderfully attractive abstractions. My go-to healing item for the whole game was the ghost cookies because they were just so cute, despite being literally the weakest item. It has very consistent theming, I love the sort of halloween theme it has. I remember about halfway through the game I happened to look at the background of the inventory menu for the first time, and it was a bunch of cute little ghosts and skulls and stuff scrolling by. I thought to myself "Oh hey, that's good! That looks nice, I like this game." Little things made me smile, you know?

The soundtrack is good! I'm super picky about audio transitions, it's a pet peeve of mine when the game loads a new area and the music just cuts abruptly? This game does not do that. Most AAA games do make that mistake, but this little indie game got it right, and I appreciate that. I did find that quickly switching between ambient music and battle music was jarring, but that's a problem every RPG ever has. The sound effect for the "piercing gaze" attack was also irritating, the enemy that does that is my least favorite and I always groaned when finding that one. But these are suuuuper tiny nitpicks, overall the audio is well done.

In conclusion, tiny game made by a tiny team that hits way above it's weight class. Quality craftsmanship and well worth playing. A solid way to spend 3 hours, this is a game I'm happy to have in my Steam Library.

It's unfinished but I've enjoyed it enough already that I feel I got my money's worth. I'm excited for more to come out! They also pushed a big update very recently, so the project isn't dead like lots of early access games might be.

Just note that boss fights can end up ridiculously easy if you pay attention to what food you equip. I shake up my loadout regularly to try and appreciate the many different playstyles (there's lots!), and I've found that pretty much everything breaks the game. XD The final boss in chapter 1 for example went down in ~1 minute for me, completely without damaging me because I nullified all damage. It seemed like a very well made and fun boss fight... unfortunately I didn't experience it because I was able to just ignore everything and hit the boss really hard.

I literally have never died in this game properly using the power ups. axe + hatchet + speed food = 500DPS and damage immunity. Maxing out poision and bleeding with a dagger and I'm doing 300+ poison damage for every hit, I slap an enemy once then run off and watch them just die at a distance. I'm playing at Normal (Souse Chef?) difficulty, so maybe it's better in hard mode?

This game is... quirky. It's rough around the edges, it's weird, and sometimes it's just a little bit annoying. And yet, it's still probably among the best ten dollars I've ever spent. This is one of those rare things that can make you laugh, cry, and genuinely shake in fear. But most of all, it made me smile. This is heartwarming in a way that very, very few things can pull off. In the end, I wouldn't say it's a very good game, really. That's just not really what this is. It's not a game, it's not a story to be told, it's an adventure. An adventure just waiting to be lived.

So do yourself a favor and check it out. At best, you've just found something amazing. At worst, it was only $10 anyway. What have you got to lose?

A perfect example of mechanics as metaphore. The game is pointless. It's a capitalism simulator. Ergo, capitalism is pointless. Go do something awesome and stop scrounging for every last dollar guys!


...


Or go buy a crapton more lemonade stands. If that was their message, they really shouldn't have built it as a skinner box.