Recent reviews by novalinnhe

Hahaha, what can I say? I'm a sucker for a good old-fashioned Flash-era time management game - the cheesier, the better.

Enjoyed Diner Dash back in the day? Miss Management? The million-and-one Papa Louie games in the Flipline Studios series? If I just brought back a flood of happy memories mentioning these, then I imagine you'll have a blast with Heart's Medicine too. In fact, I doubt you need my review to know if this is something you'll enjoy. :)

That being said, I would definitely put this game on the easier end of the time-management "hectic" spectrum. I was able to 100% the game with fairly little difficulty, and only needed to restart a handful of the levels more than once to fully complete them. There are also a few of the hamster locations which I ended up searching for on Google, as if you get the room upgrades faster than the game expects you to, the upgraded furniture can accidentally hide where the hamster is supposed to be. (This gets better as the game progresses though.)

Anything else to report? Hmm... maybe that the story is a little silly - as are many of the additional mini-games. But I understand the game is over a decade old, and other than maybe Miss Management, the majority of the old-school time management games didn't really have much of a story past the opening cutscene. So, I tend to cut games like this a bit of slack in that department - and I imagine the super-easy mini-games make this game more accessible to mobile users too.

Anyway! Enough reminiscing from me. Grab this at whatever price you like, and have fun. :)

Absolutely loved playing this! Pikuniku is a fun, very silly adventure game with a great sense of humour and art direction. The game's storyline is actually pretty dark (when you sit down and really think about it), but honestly any seriousness takes a backseat to the onslaught of colourful, zany fun which never lets up from start to finish. It feels like every major point in the story comes with a punchline, lol!

If you enjoy games with a great sense of humour and don't mind a bit of childishness/wackiness, then I would 100% recommend Pikuniku as a fun way to spend an afternoon. I reckon it'd make a great gift for a younger gamer too - and with the super-fun co-op mode which adds a bunch of additional puzzle levels, you can even join in the fun and play alongside them (if they'll let you!).

TL;DR there is a reason this game is rated Overwhelmingly Positive - so if the trailer looks fun to you, just grab it! :)

This will be a short review, as I unfortunately didn't enjoy the title enough to play it all the way through. As other reviewers have mentioned, one of the most frustrating elements of this point-and-click is that one click can trigger 20-30 seconds of animation, so it often feels more like watching a flash cartoon with a "next" button than playing an actual game.

For very young children, I imagine they won't mind this as they are essentially rewarded with a lot of 'Tom & Jerry' style slapstick humour each time they click on something new. However, as an adult it started to get quite boring, particularly as the buttons you click on to start each animation aren't necessarily all that clear or intuitive.

I also personally found some of the surrealism a little unnerving, and ended up putting the game down around half way through. As my play time is just shy of an hour, I imagine this means the full game will be roughly two hours in total from start to finish.

If you are a parent of very, very young children (maybe 3-7 years), I imagine Chuchel will be a lot of fun for them and hope this review does not put you off purchasing it. However, if you are an adult who enjoys fun point-and-click titles, I would probably go for one of this studio's other games such as Samorost, Botanicula, or Machinarium.

GNOG is a fun example of a fairly niche genre I've started calling "toyboxes". Toybox games are interactive titles, not necessarily aimed at children but often best suited to them, where your main 'objective' is to play with and explore everything on your screen. You are usually rewarded with surprises, fun colours, silly noises, and sometimes a simple puzzle or two which you can solve by applying a small amount of logic to what you're interacting with. (If you've ever played Windosill, this is the game which first gave me the idea for this genre name.)

With its wonderfully vibrant colour scheme and silly cast of characters - referring here to both the floating heads and the little people living inside them - GNOG perfectly fits the bill. Even as an adult, I had a lot of fun clicking around each level to see what everything did, and discovering the little micro-stories hidden within each level. One or two of them were a little unnerving to me, particularly the LAB-O level, but I otherwise had a pretty good time. Just an FYI that I played this with mouse and keyboard and not on VR.

The puzzles in GNOG are usually quite easy to solve once you know what you're doing, although it's "knowing what you're doing" that I sometimes struggled with. I needed to use a guide once or twice to make sense of what was going on, however I suspect this is because I was coming at each level from a more rigid, adult mindset. A kid just having fun exploring and playing with everything will probably stumble across some of the more obscure solutions by themselves. I also wonder if seeing some of the levels in VR would have made the solutions more intuitive to solve.

Also just want to mention the fantastic soundtrack, which is worth a listen if you enjoy ambient electronic music. Purp-L, LOG and Carousel are some of my favourites, although the entire album comes highly recommended. :)

TL;DR: GNOG is a short but fun toybox-style game, which children will love but can definitely be enjoyed by anyone. If you enjoy explorative, environmentally-based puzzles, or if you're just looking for an interesting/experimental game experience to pick up and play with, then this might be for you.

There have been so many reviews for this game, I imagine you'll already know whether or not you want to buy it! So just leaving this to say thanks to the developer for the awesome co-op play mode. :)

I've been playing this with my long-distance partner for well over a year now, and it's a really nice way to spend time together. I have become a master jam artisan, and my partner travels the world atop his baseball-cap-wearing horse, searching for ever-rarer gems, geodes and doodads to decorate our growing farm with. That being said, my favourite days are the ones where he comes back home with some ice cream. :) Thanks for the lovely memories, ConcernedApe! <3

I played Assemble With Care on Jan 1st 2021, almost a year after it seemed the entire world had been turned upside down by the pandemic. My first impression of the game was actually negative. Watching Maria, a twenty-something with no money and seemingly no care in the world stepping boldly off a train on the next stop on her 'antique-restoring travel adventure' made me roll my eyes. I assumed we would be following her through a superficial story of festivals, night life and love interests, fixing items on the side to help fund her fun. It was nothing I wanted to see as a twenty-something stuck inside for months on end, hundreds of miles away from family and friends.

I was completely wrong - and am so glad I decided to keep playing despite my initial reaction. Maria's first customer, a little girl called Izzy, trades a yo-yo and some buttons for your help fixing a cassette player. She excitedly asks you questions as you work, then once you finish and go to test it for her, the quiet recording of a woman singing starts to play. Izzy goes quiet. And that was the exact moment I realised this was something I needed to keep playing.

With the gameplay itself, if you enjoy puzzles or games which involve organisation (such as Wilmont's Warehouse) you will definitely get a lot of enjoyment from the repair sequences. They are relaxing, very satisfying to complete, and have a lot of unobtrusive visual and auditory information for you to use if you're unfamiliar with how the object works. I hugely enjoyed the quiet, practical nature of figuring out how to repair each item.

The story... well, after discovering the developers also created puzzle game masterpiece Monument Valley, it's no longer surprising to me that it was so special and well crafted. Far from being a superficial travel jaunt, the best way I can describe Assemble With Care's story is one of loss. Through the objects you repair and the customers you befriend, you encounter many forms of it - loss of purpose, loss of relationships, loss of loved ones - as well as the ways in which each character chooses to overcome their own struggle. I honestly wasn't expecting it, but became so invested I ended up playing the game from start to finish in one go.

There was one particular character whose story so closely mirrored a recent loss I experienced that I was brought to tears. After spending much of the pandemic working through the pain of not being able to say the words I wish I could've said, watching a character speak that pain out loud and find a way to begin moving forward is one of the most powerful emotional experiences I've had in gaming for a long time. Just as Maria is slowly moved by her customers' stories to address a personal issue in her life, I felt really encouraged to do the same, and begin the new year looking forward instead of back.

Thanks ustwo games for creating such a beautiful little title, and although it's a short experience (around two hours) I believe it is one I will carry for a long time. Definitely worth every penny of its asking price.

What an awesome little game! Very much agree with the reviews describing this as a 'reverse Katamari' - if you got any enjoyment from that series, Donut County comes highly recommended.

I loved the silliness and creativity the developer got to show off in each of the levels; it's such a simple game idea, but I honestly felt that every area (without fail!) contained a fun new toy or combination of mechanics to play around with, meaning I was never bored at any point. The humour was right up my street too, and although this game is for everyone I reckon the fun, bright colours and simple gameplay would make Donut County a particularly great purchase for younger gamers. (Just keep in mind that there's a level which presents itself as 'scary', although other than a few kabuki masks there are no jump scares or frightening images at all. It may unnerve very young players though.)

Finally, this isn't something that really bothers me but just a quick note that Donut County is a fairly short experience. I clocked in around 2-3 hours on my first playthrough, and spent another 2 playing through the achievements and showing the game to other people. A few of the achievements contain really fun easter eggs, so if you're looking to stretch your play time this is one way to do so. :)

TL;DR: Like its snack-based namesake, Donut County is a colourful, compact and sugary-sweet experience that almost anyone can enjoy. Comes particularly recommended for kids, as well as younger teens who will probably have a blast with all the 'lolsorandom' IM humour.

I generally enjoy point-and-click titles, but unfortunately cannot recommend this one. It feels noticeably empty as you can't click on many objects per scene, and you only ever pick up exact solutions for the very few puzzles you come across, meaning you don't hold more than two or three items at a time. It's also very linear, and tries hard to be funny while just not landing many punchlines.

To the developer's credit, you can tell that a lot of care has gone into this game. The art is on point throughout, and the voice acting stays interesting and fun. I just think that unfortunately the game's story lets it down, which is a real shame considering most point-and-clicks are made fun because of their engaging narratives. Without anything substantial to draw you in, you become very aware of the actual flaws of the gameplay itself (e.g. a lack of things to click on), and end up losing interest quickly.

I'm also not sure who this game is aimed at. As I mentioned before, I love point-and-click titles so have played a lot in my time, from complex murder mysteries to colourful family-friendly titles you can clear in an hour or two. You can generally tell which titles fall into the latter category (such as Gomo or Message Quest), as the stories are silly but fairly straightforward, and they provide puzzles simple enough for children to understand. Then you have titles like The Journey Down, Aviary Attorney or Jolly Rover, which challenge the player with more complex puzzles and a larger map to keep track of, as well as the stories themselves being fairly complicated and using more mature dialogue.

Adventures of Bertram Fiddle has all the trappings of a kid's adventure game - lots of bright colours, a very linear progression path, and simple puzzles that take little effort to solve. Yet with all the innuendo and fairly mature dialogue you get as you click around, as well as a few obvious no-nos (such as a severed head in a bag with its eyes cut out), I'd say children weren't the target audience for this game either. So who exactly is this game aimed at? I'm unsure; but with all my love of adventure gaming, I certainly didn't feel like the intended audience.

TL;DR: Adventures of Bertram Fiddle is a fairly middle-of-the-road addition to the point-and-click genre, which I'm sure people can get enjoyment from. I personally didn't, but if you're interested then maybe give it a shot as (judging by the reviews) I'm definitely in the minority for not having enjoyed it. That being said: if you play as many of these titles as I do and you're a little tired of sifting through rocks to find a gem, then I'd probably give this one a miss.

I absolutely loved the first Detective Grimoire game, and this sequel did not disappoint - in fact it completely surpassed all expectations I had for it!

The puzzles are more complex than its predecessor, there is a LOT more variety in dialogue between all the characters, and the new dynamic of Sally and Grimoire together is honestly just perfect. Their constant back-and-forth as you traverse the map interviewing suspects is endearing and frequently hilarious, as are the little relationships both characters strike up with the inhabitants of Tangle Tower. I found myself clicking on EVERYTHING just to hear what Sally and Grimoire would have to say; the voice actors must have had a blast recording for it. :)

Just like my previous review of the original Detective Grimoire game, there isn't much negative I can find to say. Both titles are shining examples of just how fun you can make a point-and-click, and (in direct response to a review I saw below) I personally appreciate that you can retry if you get an answer wrong. I play point-and-click titles because I want to engross myself in a story, so I prefer being able to change an incorrect hypothesis than being physically locked out of part of the story because I missed something. The only actual negative for me was the very end sequence, as there's quite a sudden change of pace and it felt a little out of step with the rest of the gameplay. That being said, the mystery was fairly complex so I understand the writers wanting to present things in a way which truly tied up all loose ends.

TLDR: Tangle Tower is an absolute blast of a point-and-click adventure, from the mystery itself to the interesting new puzzles (I LOVED the clock puzzle!!), and the cryptic, overarching lore that seems to be forming between each of Grimoire's cases. Hugely excited to see what SFB Games does next with this franchise!

Quick word of warning: like the original Detective Grimoire, Tangle Tower can get a little eerie in places. Nothing scary actually happens, but if you get anxious easily there are a number of fairly foreboding moments, particularly towards the end of the game. You might want to play this during the day or with somebody else if eerie atmospheres can frighten you.

One of the most frustrating things about Hot Tin Roof is that on paper, I should've enjoyed it. As a huge lover of all things murder mystery, I give titles like this a lot of room for error as I'm always just excited to play. I've also had this in my library for a few years now, so I was looking forward to finally sitting down with it.

What a letdown. Truly one of the most painful gaming experiences I've had so far - and one I can't even complete since there are multiple ways to softlock your save file. (There's a reason the developer has pinned a list of cheat codes to the Discussion page.)

Hot Tin Roof is set in a disorienting cuboid world, which swivels and pivots as you explore so you have to keep track of where you are both in 2D and 3D (think Fez, but far less intuitive). This wouldn't be so bad if you had a map - but you don't. There also isn't much visual variation between screens, so you can get hopelessly lost for minutes, even hours at a time as unfortunately happened to me. It was only later I realised I was softlocked into the area I'd been "lost" in, after watching multiple walkthroughs where people got stuck at exactly the same point.

Then there's the dialogue. It rambles on and on with no way to skip text you've already seen, and the most frustrating part is that the majority of dialogue isn't story - it's just banter between the detective and sidekick. At best you get a corny dad joke, but at worst it's a constant stream of reminders that the protagonist is a girl actually, which was strange because it's as though the developer has only heard of Sherlock Holmes. So much of the murder mystery genre has a female voice; Miss Marple, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Murder She Wrote, Phryne Fisher. Even the genre's most celebrated author, Agatha Christie, is female. I generally enjoy when a game tries to bring light to social issues, but in this instance it just felt forced.

There's so much more that doesn't work here - for example, the bizarre gun mechanic where you need to load each barrel of your pistol with individual bullet types, but are only ever given one or two puzzles that actually need the bullets loaded in any kind of order. Or the clue screen, which you can get softlocked into if you attempt to present a clue to the wrong person. Or the quarry area, which you can also get softlocked into if you head there earlier than the game expects. And did I mention you save your progress by taking a dump? Don't worry - there are sound effects and everything.

I've no idea why this game is priced as high as it is. Unless it comes in a bundle with something else you're already buying, I just wouldn't recommend spending any money on this at all - sale or otherwise.