Recent reviews by nekobun

As someone with mixed experience with classic survival horror (read: I'm bad at them because I'm clumsy and bad at resource management, mostly), this did a great job of walking the line between throwback flavor and not being too ball-busting for someone with the aforementioned issues. And if you -are- good at survival horror, there's already a speedrun scene and some rewards for playing with more challenge added.

Also love the tight-knit story, the well-timed humor without being a non-stop quipfest, and just the general layout of the entire park kind of making sense. Highly recommend.

Fascinating look at where gig work and automation could be headed in the not too distant future, with commentary of varying degrees of subtlety on the whole situation. Really appreciated how things seemed to respond to player choices, though I did feel like the game was trying to railroad me into one character relationship I wasn't that interested in at a couple points.

It was also genuinely interesting to get a taste of how toxic relationships can play out, given that's a bullet I've somehow had the luck to dodge over the course of my life. Said dodging makes it hard to say whether that relationship was well-written or not, but there were definitely some elements of it that rang true with what I've seen friends and acquaintances go through in the past.

Got this to cover it for 2022's Indie Racers Festival, but it'd been sitting on my wishlist for a hot minute so I probably would've ended up here anyway. Solid physics puzzler that outlines the basics right up front and escalates things just quickly enough to keep you on your toes without feeling unbeatable. Things get a little pressing in the late levels as they're fairly long compared to the quick hit early challenges, but they're easy enough to break down into practice-able sections as you get better at just cruising through one or two parts before hitting another brief wall.

I still have a ways to go before truly "gitting gud," as a look at my achievements are a testament to, but I'm looking forward to picking up the follow-ups with different settings.

Harvester Games does it again with their unique visual style and grim, grimy world spattered with bits of hope and humanity shining through here and there. As someone who's been playing through their library since The Cat Lady, it was also nice to see some nods to that game, clearly tying this to the existing Devil Came Through Here trilogy, too. Solid soundtrack as always.

Definitely not for the squeamish, and so many content warnings apply, but it's worth it if you can handle it.

The way things bounce between a solid platforming system and the puzzle mode is a nice workout for the brainmeats and the fingers alike, and I really enjoyed how the narrative played out in what were effectively interactive mindscapes/flashbacks. Also, thank you for the free-roaming options that made life easier for those of us not the best at the more intensive parkour-y bits that still wanted to see and unlock All The Things.

Great throwback to classic karters that is slowly but surely filling out its character and track roster, and throwing in some surprises along the way. The slow element is forgivable given it's pretty much one person behind most (all?) of the work going into things, and they're pretty responsive to feedback which is doubly nice. Been with this since I helped Kickstart the game and it's great checking back in now and then to see what's been added or just revisiting what I've already had fun with, and it's helped me find a whole load of indies I'd probably have overlooked otherwise.

Pretty solid fun, drifting mechanic is easy enough to get used to, with a pretty high skill ceiling to shoot for if you're feeling competitive. I'm kind of loathe to recommend stuff with a season pass, as difficult as they are to avoid anymore, but at least this one's on the cheaper end of the scale and the extra weekly challenges you get for opting in stay open the entire length of the pass, so you can jump in and finish it pretty easily whenever.

I also appreciate that they're playing around with modes and other things pretty much every season thus far, not just lumping in more things to unlock or buy for fear of FOMO. Genuinely evolving and trying new things, it's nice.

Pretty fun distillation of the rails shooter experience into a Roguelike (lite? I can never remember the difference) package. Still working out some of the kinks, but the team seems to keep pretty good tabs on bug reports in the discussion section, and fixes as well as new content keep getting added regularly. Looking forward to it hitting full release and to Whisker Squadron itself, but hopefully the game realizes I've had the Dagger since before achievements were unlockable (early test build, thanks btw) by then.

Reviewed based on the 0.64.4 build, will probably update at least one more time upon things breaking 1.0.0,

Great puzzler that falls into the easy to learn, more time to master category. Appreciate how the multiplayer registers your spots and despawns rather than turning into a nightmare of everyone pushing each other's parked cars off spots, and it's usually pretty easy to grab a match at almost any time of day or night. Plenty of free accessories to pick up alongside the pay packs, too, if you're on a budget.

Notes: This initial review is based on the game as of 5/18/2022, and I received a key for it via KeyMailer.

Still a little rough around the edges, but I definitely see some potential here. I'll get the handful of negatives out of the way up front, since this is Early Access and they're probably slated to be worked on but might be things new players will encounter:

- Had some chug issues trying to stream at the same time on my potato of a computer, but most of the time, low framerate could be fixed (or at least somewhat alleviated) by restarting a race one or two times til things stabilized.

- The Enter key, this early in, is also your friend, as you're bound to either fall off some of the courses or get wedged in seams from time to time.

- Of the race type options, it seems only circuit racing is properly implemented as of yet, though it's a good sign to see the dev wanting to add more in the future.

Those issues aside, when things work, they work. I like most of the track designs thus far, and even the ones that look kinda basic on the top down maps tend to have some vertical shifting to them or little side paths to mix thing up. The variety of vehicles is looking good so far, and I'm looking forward to the bendy buses getting their own mode per the teaser button the main screen. The skate park level looked fun, too, though it was misbehaving a bit for me; I can only imagine what you can get up to with the nightmare spider-looking car you can unlock that mentions the course in its name.

On top of all this, it's going for less than ten bucks (US), and those bucks are going to help out a family going through some rough times right now. So I'd say it's worth it.