Recent reviews by n21lv

Surprisingly addictive little strategy game. If you're a fan of Into the Breach, this will feel somewhat familiar as the game loop is quite similar.

You start on a tiny hexagonal map that expands as you progress through the game. Every tile changes what abilities you have and sometimes can also affect enemies. Every "level", i.e. every enemy wave starts with enemy spawn locations being shown to you. You must neutralise all of them in order to progress further, after which you get a chance to upgrade certain tiles of the map based on the number of enemy kills. Normally a tile starts with just one ability, but each time you upgrade it, you can choose an ability granted by one of the surrounding tiles. Because this can often lead to extremely powerful combos, you must actually think which tiles you want to expand into, as the game randomly generates which abilities the new tiles will have.

I love the very minimalistic, but extremely user-friendly interface, the sounds are quite satisfying, and you can also just play it for 30..60 minutes and close it when you feel that you're done for today. Actually, who am I fooling, you can easily sink 2..3 hours into it because of that "just one more turn" feeling.. But hey, I did start this review by saying it's addictive, so don't tell me I didn't warn you! :D

The only thing I feel it's missing is the ability to check the attack order of the enemies. There's an ability that kills the first enemy that attacks you, but there's no way to know which one it will be. And if that enemy happens to be an explosive one.. well, you'll regret picking up that "upgrade"

Apologies for the clickbait title. Don't mind the "iT iS tOo ExPeNsIvE! rEeEeEeEeE!" comments, you actually only need the base game, and only one person in your playgroup needs to own the DLCs (this is official information, check the New Frontiers Guide PDF[drive.google.com] found inside the Press Kit, available via game's official website). I bought two copies of the base game for my wife and myself, and got her the two map DLCs (Styx and New Frontiers) for just €60 on sale, which I reckon is a completely fair price, assuming the DLC content sharing feature.

Yes, you read it right. All the DLC content is shared with everyone in your game, with a limitation being that only the DLC owner being able to create the DLC-locked objects. Everyone will be able to use them, however. We have only started progressing through the Olympus missions, but if you've already finished the main map missions, want to up the challenge, feel like lightning storms haven't been burning your whole base all that often or simply want more alien-looking content, get the non-cosmetic DLCs (currently it's Styx and New Frontiers). The other DLCs are there purely as means to show your support for the awesome dev team.

P.S. Don't forget to step into a campfire when you wake up

Played it like 8 years ago and had the game like 90% completed before becoming increasingly bored with it. Reinstalled it today as I finally decided to finish it, and found that I can't continue the game because this version doesn't support cloud saves.

Come on, Steam, why does GOG have cloud saves for Fallout 3, and you still don't?

This game is trying to convince me that best way to test abstract thinking and problem solving skills is by cheating your way out through a literal wall of text

A really nice and cute puzzler with an excellent music score. Puzzles aren't very difficult and don't take much time to figure out. There are some places where you might get stuck, but that would probably only happen because you're trying to apply some very complex solution where a much simpler one would do. There are some dexterity levels where you need to think fast and do very precise jumps, but overall the game is very calm and relaxing.

Bonus points for the colourblind mode, the usage of symbols for marking different colours is quite ingenious, and as a colourblind person myself, I really appreciated that.

I've played Haven's Vault before, so I thought I'd enjoy this one too, because both games share a similar concept. However, Chants of Sennaar delivers a much more focussed experience. The game is an absolute banger and it literally made me feel joy when I completed it. That moment when you see all the folks at the top of the tower finally overcome the language barrier and conversing to each other was truly cathartic.

While Chants of Sennaar is quite short, I enjoyed every second of it (yes, even the stealth sections), and it made me really happy every time I solved one those communicator puzzles where you need to help people from two different castes. I don't know why, but seeing them light up when they realise they can help each other was such a joyful moment for me that makes you really appreciate the simple act of compassion you just performed. There are some sections where you might feel a bit lost (I'm looking at you, Garden sewers), but nothing too frustrating or difficult.

I honestly don't have anything bad to say about this game, it is a very easy recommendation. Please make more of these (?)

This could be a fun game if the developer actually made it fun to play. There is a fun joke here and there, but you can't realistically expect memes and jokes alone to carry the player's interest.

I'll start by saying that the idea to make the player experience what a homeless person is going through every day is really great. Unfortunately, when trying to realise this idea, the developer made the same mistakes that many indie developers seem to make and made the gameplay needlessly opaque and confusing. Some obvious mechanics are either missing or are deliberately nerfed in order to artificially prolong the game. The game also often punishes you for trying to experiment, which means that you need to force yourself through the same sequence of actions multiple times in order to figure out the "correct" way to progress through the game. I get that being homeless is tough and all, but if I wanted to feel miserable, I'd just go talk to my parents about politics.

To give some specific examples where the game is needlessly convoluted, take personal hygiene. You can't just wash yourself in a river, you need to visit either a charity or a paid toilet, but neither will let you in if you are too dirty/smelly. Something as basic as taking a dump requires a special skill (WAT?) and can only be done in specific locations (2x WAT?). So in order to be clean you need money, and in order to get enough money, you need to be relatively clean. This isn't an issue if you have already figured out the "correct" progression scheme, but again, this is a game where you need to have a special skill to be able to just poop on the street..

The game also suffers from purely mechanical issues that rob away the feeling of playing as a homeless person. For instance, street thugs only seem to bother you, but not other people, which doesn't feel realistic at all. There's no real punishment for engaging in criminal activity, which means not robbing people is kinda silly. Co-op literally just means regular multiplayer, because you and your party members can be doing the same quests in parallel, which means there is little reason to play this game in co-op in the first place. You could as well be simply playing two separate single-player campaigns.

Overall, there is a fun game in Hobo: Tough Life hidden somewhere, but you need to be really diving deep into dumpsters to find it, and once you do, it gets very repetitive very quickly.

5/10

It's probably the best re-imagining of an old time classic from 1998. I completed the original, but running through Black Mesa still felt fresh and engaging, despite me somewhat knowing what to expect. I recently started to structure my reviews so I can cover both negatives and positives, but I honestly can't think of a single negative thing about Black Mesa. There's no expansions, maybe? Yet?

The devs did a tremendous job of not just upscaling the game's graphics, sound and music to modern standards, but also the game's very design. If you need one thing that perfectly illustrates this, just check Xen.

10/10

I didn't buy this game to play it, no. I just wanted to thank the author for causing such immeasurable suffering and frustration for all the people that foolishly decided to try this game and capture their experience on video. I had immense fun watching all that rage.

Not gonna lie, this can be a fun game when it works properly. Slithering around obstacles and overall moving like a snake actually works quite well, which is why I was eager to give the game a chance despite its major drawback.. Half of the time you're battling absolutely abysmal, headache-inducing camera that also happens to control where you are moving. If it wasn't for that, it could have been an easy recommendation, but having to fight both unique movement mechanics AND a camera (that you have almost no control of in tight spaces) isn't what I want to spend hours of my life on.

Sadly, the developers have long since moved away from this game, and there seems to be no community camera fix or something that would at least make it less nauseating.

6/10