Recent reviews by Pinstar

A unique strategy game where you start off with $1000 to your name, the clothes on your back and nowhere to call home, you are tasked with making the most of your life. What your actual goals will be are flexible, as is your approach. There are many different roads to happiness and success and the game supports a wide variety of playstyles.

If you like The Sims but want something with a bit more challenge, this is the game for you. Highly reccomended.

Unexplored is one of those games that is unforgiving at first but gets better and better the more you play it.

The tutorial gives you the absolute basics that you need to get started, but many of the nuances are foreign to you...and this is by design. What kind of stuff should I offer up at the various alters? What are good ways to avoid damage when melee attacking monsters? Just how big of a risk am I taking drinking this unknown potion?


As you play and re-play the game, you start to become a bit more genre savy. Oh that blue potion you randomly picked up is still going to be unidentified and because they change up the colors each game, you won't be able to look up in a guide what effect it will have in that given seed. However, you'll have a better idea of when you should chance a drink, when you should toss it and when you should just hang on to it, hoping for a chance to identify it.


The real gem in this game is the procedural generation. Many floors, many exits with generated books giving you hints, lore and advice specific to that generated dungeon. Hidden or locked rooms on a higher floor might require something from a lower floor before you can access them. And all the dungeons seem thematically appropriate. They don't have that same-y feel that other procedural generatiors have...


Is the game 100% flawless? No. I did encounter a few non-game-breaking bugs. Sometimes the generator can throw something at you that is stupidly difficult, or trap you in a room with no way to exit (though there is an in game 'pray for help' safety net to get out of those situations). However the devs seem very responsive to community feedback and I have faith that this game will continue to get better.


Action/RPG is not normally my cup of tea...but I'm glad I played it and will continue to play it :)

For those of you who want to see the game in action, I did a Pinstar Plays video of it. Check it out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H25LfgVMNfw

I had been meaning to play Rimworld for awhile but never got a chance. A press key gave me the push to dive into the game I needed and man am I happy to have taken the plunge.

While I might not have the experiance of veterans of the series, I still had a blast playing the game.
I did a ~1 hour initial impressions of the alpha 14 version if you want to see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jp3tTlPx-M

It has a fairly steep learning curve, but not nearly as steep as, say Dwarf Fortress. Playing through the early newbie stages is worth the time and effort to learn the game as it is a deep, rich and fun game full of emergent storytelling and gameplay. Highly reccomend this title and would pay full price for it even if the Devs didn't give me a press key.

To quote my friend whom I got into this game: "Dude, I'm addicted to digital farming and it is not OK."

A game that allows a VERY diverse array of play styles, has a strong positive feedback loop that keeps you engaged for the long term and has a ton of heart. Much respect to ConcernedApe for his dedication to creating this masterpiece of a game.

At $15, this game is 100% worth the price of entry. No need to wait for a sale.

There is something pure hearted about Stardew Valley that brings me back to my days of playing the early Harvest Moon games. As the Harvest Moon series developed and evolved, it drifted away from the original premise and set pieces that made it great.

Stardew Valley is a return to form as a spiritual successor. The characters are memorable, the farming rewarding and satisfying, the mysteries and hidden threads in the game compelling enough to seek them out...

I'm a YouTuber. At the time of this writing this has been the most successful series on my channel, and even after 136 episodes, I still don't tire of the game.

Worth every penny and makes a GREAT gift.

The TL;DR version: It's Redwall Mixed with Game of Thrones in electronic boardgame format and is exactly as awesome as that sounds. Buy it!


The Proper version:

Armello is a strategy game that blends both strategic, tactical and luck based mechanics into a very well-polished package. Your typical game lasts about an hour (Longer for Multiplayer) and has you in a race for the crown. During each game you compete with both your opponents and AI controlled entites like Banes and Castle Guards to progress to one of four victory types.

The variety of characters (8 in total as of launch) ...each with their own unique starting stats and special abilities and the variety of victory types (4 in total) means that every game plays out differently, especially since the map is randomly generated every game. Even when playing the same character, you might find that the terrain and early game events might make one type of victory better than another.

The main victory in the game is a Prestige victory. This follows your standard victory point progression like other board games. The other three victory types are ways for players who are behind to "Steal" the win from the prestige leader. This is good as even if you fall WAY behind, you are still able to claim victory, yet it isn't unfair to the prestige leader as the prestige victory is the lowest-risk victory, and players trying to 'steal' it from you must take a riskier and more difficult path. It also means that a game isn't won or lost until the final turn, so every player is still engaged even if someone takes a very early prestige lead.

The Single Player AI is competent, most of the time. However, the true challenge and fun comes from multiplayer games. With ranked multiplayer coming in 1.1, this could absolutely be a good game to play against other people. And while there is still luck involved, more skilled players can pull off wins much more readily than novice players... thus demonstrating that skill and strategy play a signifigant portion in how well you do and that luck is merely *a* factor, not *the* factor in determining how well you do.

The price point is spot on and worth every dollar. If you compare it to a physical board game of the same scope, complexity and nature, this is about 1/3 the price that a physical board game would run you, and is a lot easier to setup and play than one. Even if you aren't a big computer game fan, if you love board games like Agricola, Carcaconne, Settler's of Cattan and the like, you'll love this game.

In all, highly reccomended!

I've been playing this game since its early beta days back in June 2015. Big Pharma might look like your run of the mill tycoon game, but it is much deeper than that.

The concentration system for drugs, the random ingrediant generation and robust AI compeditor performance (especially on higher difficulty levels) lends this to be a very interesting and *very* replayable game. Sure the random nature might mean that the available ingrediants are awesome in one game and suck in the next...but since everybody in the game plays with the same pool of ingrediants, the challenge is to make the most of what is available.

This is also a part puzzle game as you try to figure out how to cram your more and more complex production lines into a limited space. It can be extremely satisfying to have nearly every square inch of an area filled to the brim with drug machinery humming with their various drug modifying operations.

The tech tree is laid out in a logical but still strategic manner. Researching techs takes scientists and keeping scientists employed is expensive, so deciding which techs to go for in which order is important. Given the variable ingrediants each game, you aren't going to always want the same path down the tech tree each game. Not to mention you have to weight the options of leaving your scientists idle, which generates research points that are used to upgrade your equipment (making it cheaper to operate) or use them to research new techs, giving you access to brand new equipment or other discounts.

If you are a fan of business tycoon games at all, this game is for you. It is absolutely worth the price of admission.

This game is part tactical RPG and part Business sim and the dynamics between the two is what makes the gameplay so interesting.

On a tactical level, you have a large variety of options to take in battle. Basic attacks, Team attacks (with 1-4 other team members) single or double moves, teamwork stances and acrobatic vaulting and 5 different classes each with their customizable special abilities. Multiply that 5 and you'll be doing a lot of strategic thinking each round of combat.

There is an actual strategically meaningful decision to be made between performing actions that are tactically sound and actions that make for good television. Because this game is not *actually* a set of heroes saving the world, but rather about a television show about heroes saving the world, your 'audiance meter' is of serious consideration. Often times the director's instructions (which, if completed, greatly helps your audiance meter) run counter to what one might do otherwise if thinking in a pure strategic manner. Striking a balance between the two is the key to maximizing ratings for an episode while still winning a fight.

The higher your ratings the more money you get. Money plus material drops allow you to upgrade your studio and further customize your 5 actors. Add to all of that a very awesome, and branching, story and you have a game that is WELL worth the cost of admission. The only thing that would make it 100% perfect would be to make an episode editor allowing players to easily create their own episodes and share them on the workshop. Regardless, this is an indie game that is worth your time and money.

Great Game, and now that mods are once again free, I have changed it back to a positive one. A must-own for any PC gamer!

When I was a child, I had a dog growing up. She was a golden retriever named Sparkey and she was the best damn dog a kid could ever have. Was she perfect? No. She would seek out and consume cat poop and begged at the table when we tried to have dinner, but I didn't care. She was an awesome dog and I spent hours playing with her.

Near the end of her life, her liver shut down. She started to ♥♥♥♥ and puke in the house, and even started to snap at me; she was in a lot of pain. In the end the vet suggested we put her down. It was a sad day. I had lost a best friend that I had for years, but it was for the best.

Later we got a new dog. A Yellow Lab/German Shepard mix named Milo. Milo was not Sparky, but he is still an awesome dog. Playful, good with kids, cutely vocal and a big lump who's good for hugging. He isn't perfect either, he sheds like crazy, but that doesn't make him a bad dog.

Why did I ramble on about dogs?

The Sim City Franchise is Sparkey, with 5imCity 2013 being her post liver-failure. A game series I remember fondly as the stuff of my childhood, willfully editing out what happened at the very end.

Cities: Skylines is Milo. A new dog, a different dog, but an awesome dog.

If you are a fan of city building games at all, you are going to want to pick this game up right now. It is only $30 AT LAUNCH. That is not a sale price, that is the full undiscounted price and it is worth double that (which, by the way, is what 5imCity 2013 cost at launch). It is stable and fun out of the box and with adamant mod support and a dev team that is actively listening to the community feedback, it will get even better.

There are two conflicting aspects of any game, chaos and order.

Order governs logical progression of the game. A well-ordered game will be predictable but also reliable. If you learn to play a well-ordered game properly, your actions will always be rewarded with advantages. At its logical extreme, a fully ordered game can be "Solved" and thus a concrete method can be devised to guarntee success.

A chaotic game is unpredictable. Consiquences don't always follow logically from actions and the game is never the same twice. At its logical extreme, the actions of the player have 0 impact on your success or failure as that is fully determined by the random number generator.

Dungeon of the Endless mixes these two forces and achieves a solid mixture. The game does reward good gameplay decisions, but also throws curveballs at you. A really raw run of bad luck can still end a game by a skilled player, but there is always room for improvement. Learning to account for risk and the built-in randomness is part of the learning curve and maintaining control even when events turn against you is part of where development of skill comes into play.

I have yet to complete a full run. The game repeatedly kicks my butt... but I do not feel frustrated. I learn from each failure and every time I do a litlte bit better. I highly reccomend this game. I missed the 50% off steam winter sale...but having bought it at full price, I feel I have gotten very good value for my gaming dollars already, and I'm just starting to scratch the surface.