Recent reviews by Abby

Probably the best online interface out there right now for playing Liar's Dice, a truly timeless folk game and one of my favorite table games of all time. It also has some other bluffing games/variants, which are good in their own right.

The vibes are *almost* immaculate. Unfortunately, the character voices really take you out of it, because they're not only AI - they're really crappy AI. Stresses all the wrong syllables, like they didn't even bother to make adjustments. Clearly a lot of work went into the art and gameplay, which makes the total absence of quality in the voice department stick out like a sore thumb. JUST CAST REAL PEOPLE.

I've played this on Android long before the craze, as I'm literally always on the lookout for good social deduction games, and at the time, it stood out to me as a very unique take on the formula that used its status as a realtime game to offer unique challenges, as one of the few realtime social deduction games there were at the time.

There are now plenty, but Among Us is still the best at what it does, and it has evolved for the better over time, with interesting new maps and roles.

Unfortunately, its explosion in popularity resulted in it adding much more monetization to keep up with server costs, but as far as monetization methods go, they could have done a lot worse. For example, you can buy a "battle pass" of items but keep working on it for literal years without it ever expiring - there's no obnoxious demand that you keep playing during a specific timeframe or you lose potential rewards forever.

While I still prefer other, more contemplative social deduction games such as Blood on the Clocktower, this is the best realtime one, and it's still so approachable, that it's impossible not to recommend it.

The best classic hardcore roguelike, and by far the best entry point for someone who hasn't played a true roguelike before but would like to get into them. The weird 2004-era-RuneScape graphics are great and full of charm, and they help you better visualize an experience that traditionally gives you tilesets at best. The controls are also instantly intuitive yet textured - click the wand in your inventory, choose to zap with it, then drag the arc of the shot to match what you want, and maybe if you can aim it just right, you'll hit everyone in the room. That's a level of nuance you don't normally get, but presented in a way anyone could understand.

I really can't recommend WazHack enough. It's $5, just get it.

(This review is mostly in praise of the mobile version of the game for Android, as that's where most of my hours lie, but I've played the PC version too and it holds up here just as well.)

Sure would be incredibly fun to play if it were possible to make it run these days, even with stability mods. So, err, probably don't buy this, even though it's one of the greatest RPGs of all time.

The only fully wholesome zero-trolling MMO, finally on PC. It's a great place to hang out with your friends, in the vein of old school chat room style games, MUDs, Furcadia, etc., all with an absolutely gorgeous and calming art style.

The reason it's kept so wholesome is purely by measured design choices - you can't even see what others are wearing, or touch them, let alone talk to them, without their consent. You need to go through multiple levels of consent to finally reach speech rights with someone. You'd think this would discourage communication, but it honestly does the opposite, as people are happy to forge connections through the fog.

Endgame is fashion, of course, and you can put a lot of money into fashion IAPs if you're inclined to, but these days they're much better at making sure that there are lots of free fashion options released in every event.

Also, the actual gameplay is essentially a collectathon, which is a really cool angle for an MMO I've never seen before.

heehee number go up

Follows the Vampire Survivors school of design, namely, using brain hacking techniques usually used by gambling dens to make a very high quality ethical game feel really, really, really good to play. This time, in the form of a very well considered card based roguelike that's highly winnable yet hard.

I know every model has like a dozen polygons each but this does not at all subtract from this being an extremely good Bioshock-inspired action roguelite. It's an actual 10/10 popcorn hit imo, and a great example of how graphics mean nothing in the face of good gameplay. And it's so cheap! Seriously, try it out. Especially if you enjoy the Lovecraft mythos.

Very strongly focused on respecting the player, their time, and their relation to others players' characters. Almost all progression, apart from your initial 80 levels, is horizontal - you get mounts that can make you more mobile and able of moving in more dimensions, you unlock new ways to interact with the environment like boating and gliding, you gain a subclass which mostly just makes your gameplay different, not much better, etc. Even the greatest goals of the game, Legendary equipment, are only as powerful as the tier below them - the only thing they actually add after that is the ability to fully re-spec the weapon at will, which is once again, incredibly useful but not a form of vertical progression. Everyone is equal, basically. This is even reflected in its truly free to play/buy to play nature - you can't even buy your way into more months of gameplay, making you more able to connect with the community than others. Everyone gets to participate exactly as much as they like.

One could argue this comes with downsides, like any design decision - if everyone is equal and you aren't compelled to make good use of your playtime, maybe you'll feel aimless? But I'd rather be aimless than exploited.

The story and gameplay is also still excellent. I highly recommend playing through Heart of Thorns at least, it's a ton of fun. Very soloable, if that matters to you, though the community is also very friendly and will gladly help.

I have played many hundreds of hours of this, joined early. Luckily, you can play the Steam version even with your non-Steam account, you just need to input a launch command to let the client know.

I didn't expect them to land 1999, but it's the best content since Duviri, and that's saying something considering the Cavia. It's been hit after hit these days, they really decided with The New War to reawaken a sleeping game and then never stop making it better and better.

I'm throwing out so much expansion name nonsense word-salad, but that's kinda how this game works - it's twenty games in a trenchcoat. While there are similarities between most modes, they're different enough that it all feels unique, and you can go into every day saying "I want this specific type of experience today, let me do x".

Want a bridge simulator? Railjack. Immaculate vibes and fun characters? 1999 or the Cavia. Raw challenge? Steel path. Roguelike? Duviri. The Nemesis System from that one game? Liches. Do you want to suffer in a mode that isn't fun at all? All we've got for you there is Archwing missions, sorry, lol.

The story is also incredible and focuses on a main character who has been through extreme trauma their whole life, which I see as a big plus. Nothing's better than dramatic Space Trauma™ that shapes reality itself with the grieving process. It touches on so many interesting topics and has made me cry, 10/10, really, you've got to try it.

You wouldn't know about this cool plot and these modes from just starting the game, unfortunately. That's the one big downside of Warframe - it has functionally no tutorials whatsoever, despite desperately needing them. You need to ask other players how to get to the good stuff, otherwise you may spend hundreds of hours without actually starting the game or interacting with the story in any way. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, since the early content is fun too, but it leaves an impression that the game will be a lot less impressive than it actually turns out being.

My advice? Do the quest The Duviri Paradox as early as possible, it shows you some of what you can look forward to, and it unlocks a super fun roguelike mode for when you want no-strings-attached warframe goodness. Plus, it unlocks The Circuit, which gives you tons of free warframes for grinding it! Getting new warframes can be frustrating for new players so it's nice to have a way that leads you through it all for free.

So, yeah, Warframe. One of the best MMOs ever made, amazing story, dozens of unique high quality games in one, a grind game where the grind is actually fun because you're a space ninja while you do it. It's a wiki-open-in-another-tab game, but it's a really, really good one, and I think you owe it to yourself to try it out. It is properly free, after all.

Clarification: I have ~2000 hours on Switch and PS5. PC is my least played platform for this game, as it is for most games.

I've never been treated even remotely this well by a gacha game before. Like, not even close.

You start with all 12 playable characters the game will ever have, and only gacha their gear and costumes. So, if you're a huge Ishmael fan, for example, and you don't have any gacha gear for her, sure, you probably won't use her in battle that often, but you have her. That's a massive distinction, because human brains are wired to love characters, and usually, gacha games prey on this by making compelling characters then withholding them so you go nuts about that and spend as much as it takes to acquire them.

Even then, let's say you're the kind of person who goes nuts for a costume, and views its limited banner as an anxiety-inducing ticking clock. Well, you can just buy any costumes or gear you might want with gameplay-earned currency instead. There's an entire tab full of everything from the past that went out of circulation, even old battle pass rewards, all buyable without spending a single real cent. You've never lost your shot at anything forever - another common abusive tactic of normal gacha games that this game doesn't partake in.

This honestly just feels like a regular game that only went with the gacha model because it's popular. They easily could have released the same thing with a dozen different monetization approaches - as long as there's some form of IAP to keep the long term development going, that's all it comes down to. That is to say, the gacha doesn't encroach into the gameplay experience at all, and it's just a good game.

Speaking of the game being good, let me review the actual gameplay now - overall, it's a great, highly complex system that can't be fully automated and requires you to think every single turn. The battles in the story are fun, the story is amazing, and for when you've done all the story battles the game currently has, there are multiple roguelike modes that are really fun to play.

It can get a little obtuse, however, and that's even if you assume you watched an off-site tutorial. There's just a ton going on, stats within stats, weird mechanics, etc. It's essentially a card and dice game, but the rolling and card drawing is all abstracted into very video-gamey forms, which only makes things more confusing than they needed to be. If the skills were rectangle shaped, for example, that might better convey to the player that they function like they're in a deck.

If you didn't watch an off-site tutorial, absolutely forget it. Worse than having no tutorial at all, the game has an actively harmful tutorial which teaches you things that aren't true, like that the game revolves around the Resonance mechanic. (It doesn't.) Sure, the early story gameplay is easy enough that you'll probably muddle through several cantos even without knowing what anything you're doing means, but that just means you're building up bad habits. Not ideal.

To go more into depth on the story - it handles a lot of heavy topics respectfully, and heavily leans into literary references, dystopic themes, and how one can possibly handle living in a world that is not designed for humans to thrive in. Not only is that exactly up my alley, but it's especially pertinent in this period of very late stage capitalism, and I think a lot of people will very strongly resonate with that, and resonate even more with the flawed and tortured characters going through it.

So - should you play Limbus Company? It depends.
Are you a gacha lover looking for a gacha game that's way less evil than you're used to? Definitely play it, there's no contest.
Do you like complex systems that have so much going on that there's always room for strategic growth? Yes, you've come to the right place.

Are you easily triggered by dark and disturbing content? Run far, far away. Apart from the comic relief, that's the majority of the plot.
Do you want a game that actually explains how to play inside the game itself and doesn't need you to take on an apprenticeship with a veteran player just to understand it? You won't find that here either, the game's a total mess in that regard.

So, some pros, some cons. Overall, I adore this game! It's the black coffee of video games, though - while I may personally love it, it's for a very specific sort of person, not everyone.

(Note: I've played this game for many, many hours. I just honestly prefer it on mobile, and hardly play it on PC, hence the low hour count.)