Recent reviews by CrossBread

An enjoyable little game at the end of a long day. I think it's a good sign that when my mind wandered to wondering when the demo would cut off, I didn't want it to finish yet.

Here after seeing Thomas Brush play test the game and pass on quickly, I wanted to give it a closer look. I'll recommend it because it is in an early state and I think I can see through the work in progress to the desired end goal which seems interesting.

Things that work:
Definitely sets a mood.
There are little things to discover in the UI.
Feels somewhere between a sim and an arcade mech shooter.
Lots of intricate UI buttons and textures fit the theme/mood.

Things that are working against the game:
The shader used on the atmosphere feels like you're under water and is kind of nauseating.
This also makes it harder to tell what ground is basically flowing sand that insta-kills you.
Lethal ground isn't shown on the radar.
The radar is in the opposite orientation of normal because it is on the ceiling.
The player starts facing a direction where walking forward kills you and there's no understanding why.
Button idle states don't communicate they are a button, a subtle glow in a different color would help teach the player what is interactible.
It is hard to tell what is important in the UI and what is decor.
Mouse sensitivity setting is unclear and hidden in the menu
When you die and click return to base, your mouse starts over the exit game button so an accidental click looks like a crash (which happened to Thomas after dying the first time). Positioning the mouse over whatever lets you play again would help.
The motion on the menu screen is kind of nauseating and it isn't clear why you are moving.


Make the start demo button blink.
Make the launch button blink.
If the lethal sand were glowing lava, the game would onboard much better.
If objective markers that are not visible on the scope at least gave an arrow marker, you could find your way to points of interest.
There are lots of little cameras and displays, but it would be really nice to know where your feet are landing while hovering.

I like the direction as a demo, but in the current state the actual game would be very difficult to release and avoid refunds.

A fascinating little game. The levels take a bit of though, dexterity, and timing. Worth a look if you enjoy challenging platforms.

I've had my eye on this one for a while. Super Buster Bros (SNES) was one of my favorite games to play with my dad as a kid and this is the first game I've seen since to revisit that glorious co-op gameplay. Do yourself a quick favor and check it out the full trailer and if it brings a smile to your face, drop a quick share on your socials to support this kind of quality indie dev. At $10 this is a steal, no reason to wait for a sale. Charming art and soundtrack plus a nice balance of challenge, fun, and wackiness. Definitely some 2D boy / Tower of Goo vibes in the aesthetic.

Speaking of nostalgia, look at that World 1 map. ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

It's an easy core loop to pick up with new twists every level plus high score arcade survival modes that get absolutely crazy. Looking forward to playing the rest of the way through. 😁

BUTTON is a rare gem of amusemenT. WHat you see on the surfAce is misleadiNgly plain and ordinary. In this, BUTTON is not only a metaphor for life and the people we are impressed upon within it, but BUTTON is a metaphor for itself. A... meta-metaphor, if you will.

Is the world feeling a little too weighty today? Too many pressing matters? TaKe a moment for yourSelf. Sit Down somewhere where you cAn see or preferably even touch grass, grab your heaDphones, and reflect.

Right in the same vein as Deep Rock Galactic with familiar guns, classes, and phrases. Well adapted and re-imagined in top-down Vampire Survivor like style. Even in early access there is easily 10-20 hrs worth of unlocks to keep you happy and engaged.

Note that the failure rate seems much higher here than in the FPS version of DRG. But keep in mind that in this version, you keep your upgrade minerals, and gold, even when you fail, so don't expect to win every run right off the bat even as a veteran player. You can make decent progress only completing 25% of your runs.

At the full $10 price it seems a fair purchase, on sale it's a great deal.

This game is as COZY as cozy games get. No threats, no timers, no "exhaustion", just places to explore, charming characters to meet, and that sweet sweet feeling of starting with nothing and building (and decorating) it into something you're proud of. In this case, that's expanding a place for your little bug friends to live, kind of like a zoo or aquarium, where townspeople come and pay to see your growing collection. It's a fun core loop.

It's a little like Pokemon, but without the combat. So, you've got almost 200 bugs to collect in a hand full of environments with day/night cycles and seasons influencing what bugs you might find. Also, this is NOT an asset flip. These are all unique handcrafted pixel art bugs, most of which I've never heard of before. It's a genuinely hard decision to pick which ones to sell to earn the money to get more tanks for the others because I don't want to let go of a beautiful bug not knowing if I'll find another one like it again soon.

There's inevitably a comparison with Stardew Valley and other farm/town sims, so if you want to balance lots of complex systems, manage energy, production pipelines, and that nagging feeling like you didn't quite get enough done in the day... this game may not be for you. 😜 However, if your favorite part of Stardew was getting to add on to your house, and explore the town and surrounding areas, Bug & Seek does that really well with some peppered in quippy comments from NPCs that give me a chuckle.

The graphics appear to be simple pixel art at first glance, but there's a lot of life and polish in there when you're in-game. The trees wiggle like you tickled them when you're looking for bugs, the flowers and tall grass dance when you wander through (which, btw, is a great way farm bugs quickly with so many checks in a row), and there are little flourishes all over. Little fireflies zipping around, pleasant animations on transitions. It feels nice and polished, but will still run on your potato of a PC if that's all you've got to work with.

Finally, this is a labor of love from a husband and wife team with help from their kids. It's not just a beautiful thing to support indie dev like this, but several of my favorite indie games have turned out to be from couples making games together. There's just some special secret sauce that gets added to the mix.

Harkens back to Sim Tower, but with some modern quality of life improvements and layered systems and challenges. It is well balanced,

I actually found myself scouring my expense statements to figure out where I could cut costs and survive the day. Had $10 left in my account and maxed out loans (feels like real business in that regard) but there was a way through. I bulldozed a high upkeep cost service and adjusted rent just enough to upset my tenants, but not cause them to leave right away. The turn around gave me just enough to afford one more office build out. That was able to snowball back up to $4k / day in profit. Feels great.

Zachtronics makes programming games, so expect these to get very challenging. They're great to dig your teeth into and really think just like Shenzhen I/O and many of their other titles. There several games to be found within this virtual Sawaya system. Some have instructions, but others don't and there is a kind of meta-puzzle just to learning what the buttons do and what actions are available-- just like growing up running DOS games off of those 100 game collection CDs you'd get at Target or maybe some floppy diskettes from a friend. (Those were the precursor to Flash games, and Flash games lead to the mobile games of today.)

Don't let the "lack of instruction" tempt you to be frustrated. Recognize that the game starts when the Sawaya loads up, not just when a level loads. Figuring out how to play and access new games is exactly part of the puzzle that recreates the feeling of getting to use my Dad's 386 Acer PC when I was 8 years old.

Everything from the variants of solitaire, assembly line programming, even this crazy flesh DNA programming game are crafted with all the attention you'd expect from Zachtronics and lead to a feeling of deep satisfaction once conquered.

I love that they even simulated the hard-disk spin-up sound, dial-up modem tones, and download times for new games. But there's plenty to play while the next game "downloads" for a few minutes.

Turn on the filter to bend the screen like an old CRT for an extra pinch of immersion.

Subnautica in space with less threat and the deep satisfaction and challenges of transforming the hostile environment.

I felt pretty comfortable with my routine venturing to the end of the valley and back a few times.

Finally established a small second base there. Started watching a space thriller on Netflix.

Something perilous happened and I looked away while exploring, and when I looked back to the screen night had fallen... and I had wandered into a series of canyons and become disoriented.

My oxygen was close to expiring, when I realized I had just enough resources to build another room and a door.

But I was also low on water and beginning to run low on food.

After refilling my oxygen, I was able to scavenge enough with my flashlight to build the crafting station which could be used to melt ice and fix my hydration problem. It felt like I had stepped into "The Martian".

When day broke I tried to remember which way I had entered the clearing from the canyon and explore back out. I guessed wrong and almost got turned around and ran out of oxygen again.

But there were higher quality resources here. And I was eventually able to use them to craft a compass. Now at least I could systematically eliminate which canyons did not lead back to the safety of my wide-open valley.

Just as I had figured out which way I thought would leave me back home, I noticed some wreckage balanced up above in the rocks. I decided to take a quick detour and hit a jackpot. My exploration was rewarded by several components that would not only provide food long enough for me to explore the area more closely, but resources for terraforming the planet faster as well.