Recent reviews by Lain Iwakura

Just because you understand the individual components of what you're parodying and why they work, and even understand what about it works to parody versus what wouldn't, doesn't mean that your parody itself will actually be any funny, nor any good. The main component that seems to not be understood is that the original was nearly over-the-top already with its philosophizing and heavy commitment to a broad spectrum of viewpoints, but still earnest about itself. Going the opposite direction completely into juvenile humor (minus one audio log that nearly fully understands why the original logs at least work for people) isn't too effective, and is also why the ultimate punchline of the game isn't effective at all.

Also, having poor hand-eye coordination or hands that end up shaking every now and then can actually make the game more frustrating and difficult to play than The Witness itself! That in itself would almost be funny in an annoying way if the game itself were entertaining.

For a game that describes itself as "Levels are quick but hard to master", it sure isn't that difficult.

Its main trick isn't the difficulty of the course or mastering its secrets; rather, it's visual deception. The presentation is a bit obnoxious. with a some pattern that flashes in and out in the background while you play that's easily distracting, the player being hard to see among many of the backgrounds due to a poor lack of coloring and distinction, and courses can often be laid out in a way that deceives you into looking difficult, rather than actually being difficult. Once you get past the presentation and how the courses are laid out, it's way easier than it seems, and it becomes less about trial and error and learning the game's tricks and more about fighting against the visual design to look good. There's even a level in the fourth course called "Confused?" which I think says it all. The final final area of course four is at least the least obnoxious-looking. A nice touch is that the lives counter stays static on a certain point of the level. If that's intentional, it's admittedly pretty funny.

There are also in-game achievements, but with the way this game is set up, why even bother going for those? As far as the soundtrack goes, it's pretty typical pump-up music, but not really anything more than decent. And thankfully the game doesn't belabor itself with dragging it on too long; I was able to more or less see everything and get the big picture in 20 minutes.

There's a sequel in the works, which I hope is frustrating but for the right reasons this time, rather than the wrong ones. I don't expect any of these side-scrolling, difficult 2D platformers to be on the same level as other highly-praised examples of the genre, but if the game has to rely on tricking you to give the illusion of difficulty, it's not really difficult so much as it is a burden.

Emily is Away is a unique game in many ways. The aesthetics and visual style are immediately captivating and familiar by way of utilizing Windows XP + AIM (R.I.P) to capture a simplistic art style. It immediately grabs your attention where a lot of other games wouldn't. The fact that you get to pick your own screenname and a new icon for each year is a nice touch as well. And depending on the different screennames you pick for yourself, you can get even more icons! It's very cute and nice, even if it's weird to be giving myself a Binding of Isaac avatar for a game that starts out in 2002. And you can customize your text color and background, though so far I haven't found any unique dialog from it like the screenshots promise.

There are two central characters in the game: yourself (who you can name whoever you want, yay ambiguity and self-inserting!) and Emily, the titular character. The game explores the relationship (of sorts) that you two have over the years, from senior year in high school to the end of college. As you two talk, you explore the friendship you have and some of the unsaid feelings between the two of you. It's nothing new or revolutionary, but the way it's presented certainly would hit close to home for a decent number of people.

A really nice thing that the game does right is showing you the thought process of your character. They typo and make some mistakes, going back and deleting various words or phrases, or even whole messages that get deleted due to their intimacy and emotions. It shows how your character wants to present themselves best for Emily and show off their best side. The different choices you can make that decide different things your character does (like the music they like or the school they go to) let you form a (sort-of) idealized character of your own as you talk to Emily. It's a very neat concept... if it mattered.

Ultimately, nothing you do in this game matters. All those choices you're given lead to the same outcome eventually. The game promises "A dialogue decision-based branching narrative.", but when all of the dialog ultimately leads to an ending that just... happens, it just feels like a waste of time. While I have no problems with the story itself and the way it gets presented, it doesn't help the fact that the story, the choices, and even the character development feels so bare and... so dull. And the absolute worst thing an emotionally-driven game like this could be is dull. I don't ever feel like I'm in this world I'm building, and Emily is a close friend of mine; it just feels like I'm chatting with an AI once every so often.

The game is also short. For free games that can be a good thing, and a game like this also can benefit from short playthroughs. The downside is that, due to the fact that this game has no real choices of sorts, there's hardly any replay value. You can choose different paths to go. You can play one certain part and have Emily be annoyed at you, then play that part another way and have her be indifferent. But it just really doesn't make a difference. There's no diversity, nothing to make the game exciting, and because of that, the game feels like it plods and drags itself along in its roughly hour-long playthrough. One thing that'd probably help is talking to all of those other friends in your friends list. There's no incentive to look at their profiles or see how they change because, well, why would you? You can only talk to Emily. It feels like fluff to make the game a bit more full.

Was I affected? Ultimately not. I've been in this situation before (though it didn't last over a number of years), and a couple points in the game did sting me a bit, being out of a relationship now. But they're fleeting moments in a game that almost feels like it doesn't want you to keep playing, Certainly, the fact that so many people have felt so strongly and receptive towards the game makes me think I'm in the minority. And it's free, so you can't go wrong with the price! Give it a shot yourself. You don't really have much to lose. However, given what the game has, what it promises, and how its execution handles, I can't recommend it.

Pink Hour is simple and short, and considering that it's free, it's worth at least checking out. It's a typical 2D platformer. You can shoot and move and dodge obstacles and all that. The story is pretty silly, but cute. You play as Pink, an office worker, who must obtain a document for her boss in one piece. It's located underground, for some reason, and she can blast enemies, somehow. You gotta roll with it.

The difficulty is pretty simple, so it's not a particularly stressful endeavor, and a fair amount of people are going to beat this on their first go. The graphics are simple and pixelated, and not particularly bad, though not the neatest looking either. There's only one boss fight, but funnily enough, you can skip it if you jump far enough and at the right time to go over its head. There's two different endings you can get here; one for bringing the document back, and one for beating the game without it (if you get damaged, for example). The ending for beating it with the document gives you a short cutscene, leading to the store page for Kero Blaster, which is a nice way to promote your game (since this is an advertisement for the game, after all).

There's a hard mode you can unlock if you beat the game, which extends its replayability just a little bit. Because I'm not the best at video games, this took me a lot longer than it probably should have, but it's still pretty beatable in under an hour. What makes the mode so hard is that Pink (the character you control) tends to float when she jumps, which can make it easy to over or underaim when you jump. This isn't bad in the regular mode, but in hard mode, some platforms are only barely big enough to where you have to jump perfectly. I'm not particularly a fan of the "perfect jump" difficulty in games, so a good portion of the hard mode wasn't too fun, and the second-to-last screen right after the boss fight took up maybe the most time on my hard mode attempts. However, once you figure it out, you'll be able to get the rhythm down and blow through it pretty fast. There's an ending to unlock here if you beat it with the document, leading into either Kero Blaster or Pink Heaven.

The game is fun for the short amount of time it offers, and while I'm not a fan of the jumping, the game isn't punishing and doesn't want to be arbitrarily hard. It's a nice relaxing time overall. Also, it's free, so there's no stress over cost per playtime. The one downside for some people may be that there are no achievements or trading cards, but this isn't a loss in my book, considering how straightforward the game is. Give it a go!

There's a potentially fun game in here somewhere, but there's quite a bit that doesn't make this work overall, and makes it so that I can't recommend it, even in Early Access as it grows and develops.

The biggest problem, one that absolutely needs to be pointed out, is the auto-running. It absolutely kills the game for me, and makes even simple and easy levels frustrating. This does make timing more important, but the fact that it complicates basically everything else makes the experience unenjoyable. There are several moments where you have to mash back and forth on the arrow keys to time a jump across an obstacle, or even doing it between two different obstacles, because you can't stop running. The objective of the game then goes from scaling walls and avoiding obstacles to figuring out how to get around the auto-running to successfully navigate.

The controls are also a bit frustrating. Delay in inputs means you have to make yourself jump or turn earlier than you want to, which probably isn't that bad until you play a level where optimal timing is essential. It showcases the downsides really boldly. Wall-jumping is the absolute hardest thing to do, as you'll either not jump when you want to in some cases, or not go far enough to the other side of the wall. There's even a glitch where your mummy climbs an invisible wall all the way up to the ledge. It's frustrating and hard to really replicate; it just tends to happen. It's amusing at first as well, until you run into an obstacle or fall because of it, and you may not even realize what's happening at first. When you're wall-jumping to avoid obstacles, it's a run killer. And I don't usually feel like it's my fault when I die, unlike other hard games, because the controls don't feel responsive.

There are other small glitches and bugs that aren't bad on their own, but dampen the experience overall. More than once have I wall-jumped, only to jump through the wall into my death. Some cases, I'll land inside the wall and can move around and jump out. I had to quit the game and reboot it when I beat the tutorial because no menus would pop up for me otherwise. Collision detection seems finicky, as I'll apparently have gotten into an obstacle when it seems like I've cleared this. This is most evident with the crocodile pit, but I'm willing to excuse that as just needing to be extra sure I clear it.

There are good things however! I like the vibe and aesthetic of the game, and the music wasn't annoying like most games in this genre tend to be. While you can only really jump over obstacles, the variety of traps and the methods in which they kill (or even affect) you is pleasant and refreshing. The ability to complete challenges and earn stuff at a decent enough rate is appreciated if one doesn't want to purchase any of the microtransactions, so you don't feel like you're grinding just to grind. On smaller notes, I appreciate that not only can you reduce the quality of the game, but even at the lowest settings for quality, it still looks really nice. Except for some hiccups in the period between dying and resetting, the game runs really well on my piece-of-♥♥♥♥ computer.

The ability to play others' levels and rate them and compete on leaderboards for each level is appreciated, but there's a major problem here; you can't preview the map before playing. The most you get is around five seconds to survey the map, no matter how huge or littered with blocks/obstacles (and this includes the time it takes to zoom out to look at the map). You have to essentially dive into these maps blindly, and for maps that are either huge, complicated, or non-linear, this is a killer. I've quit maps several times because of this. Even something small like seeing a preview of the map before I play the level would help incredibly. It would also help so I know when to avoid levels that are essentially auto-completion or not designed well, and allow me to get the most out of the game.

Normally, this isn't the kind of game I'd play, but it's free and Early Access, so I decided to check it out. There's potential, and tightened up and improved on more, I could see myself coming back to this every once in a while to enjoy. But at this stage, I simply can't recommend it.

• Please get rid of that slow clapping when you complete a level. It's really annoying.
  
• Achievements are always nice!
  
• A little more diversity in the music so I don't feel like I'm tuning out.
  
• Labeled menus. I could hardly tell what button to click because none of them were labeled or told me what to do or what function they had.
  
• Level of the Day/Week, something to emphasize the community's creations more.

Knowing nothing about Starcraft or eSports (in its current form, at least), getting into this was still really easy. There was a slight bit of novelty starting out, but from there, everything about it was really intriguing and built in a way to keep you reading.

The story is written by someone who definitely sounds like they know what they're talking about, in terms of culture and gaming. This can result in it being a bit hard to grasp at times, but there's still a lot of genuine writing and emotion, and not just someone writing about video games because they think it's "cool" or "hip". The characters as well are written in a sincere way, not coming off as caricatures or stereotypes, but as actual human beings. There's nuance and layering to them.

The way the story paces itself is also done in a smart manner. There's not too much dumping of exposition and action, yet you don't stall in the story for too long as well. It's a great way to get you accompanied with the setting, the characters, and the playing field as well. And, as an aside and small bonus, you can pick whether you play as a male or female protaganist, which doesn't change the story much (and if it does, it's not too noticeable).

Which is another good thing about this game! Occasionally, you get to play in some mock Starcraft 2 battles, Rather than actually controlling the battles yourself, you're given action trees to decide which way the story goes and how the characters react. What help is that these options are rarely designed to make you super awesome or unbeatable; they're how a player who's in a bit too over their heads would think and react. The game and story, then, doesn't require you to be a hardcore fan of SC2 or eSports to really get it. You can start right out of the gate and still feel connected with everything.

There are a couple drawbacks though. The first one only really applies if you don't know much about the subject matter going in beforehand like I did. The dialog and jargon around the game can be confusing, and you'll likely not know what's going on because of it. The game tries to combat this by giving you a glossary when opening the menu, and updating it with terms bolded in-game whenever you encounter them. It still doesn't help too much though, as I had to google some of it in order to really pick up on it. The game tries to combat this by giving you a tutorial video accessible when you first start the game, or on the extras menu. It's voice-acted which... which makes it really cringeworthy at times. It got annoying enough to where I quit out of it early because I didn't think I'd make it through. And finally, while the game has some nice music at times, at others... it sounds too stock-music-esque and a touch unfitting to really sell itself.

Still, this doesn't detract from the game majorly. At heart, the story is a simple one; someone who wants to make the most of their talent and is willing to risk their finances and reputation to pursue it, even in a field where fame and longevity is uncertain. Make no mistake; though the game can be a bit silly at times, it doesn't treat its subject matter in a non-serious way, and that gives the game a much-needed breath of fresh air that most visual novels recently can't give you. Also, it's free and has low requirements, so any competent computer should be able to run it.

Very fun game all around. As I spend more and more time with it, little details stick out, like details in the background and NPCs, and different paths to take in the environment where you can either deal with enemies head-on or sneak around them. The story is really good, and though the dialog is eye-roll worthy at times, the balance between the humor the various characters possess and the seriousness of the story (which is handled pretty well, all things considered) helps keep the player engaged. The difficulty is just hard enough to not make the game a breeze while also not being overly punishing for players, especially with the controls.

And speaking of them, this game isn't flawless. The controls are definitely weird, and can take some getting used to, especially if you play with a keyboard. There's definitely been a number of times where I've failed a section multiple times because I keep pressing the wrong button since I go for the key that feels more intuitive. Customizable controls would be a huge boon.* And sometimes the music choice and screen you're playing in don't match up well and feel weird to play.

I bought this for $8.50, though I'd gladly pay $15 for it. Even with its faults, the game has me hooked, and I definitely can't wait to see what the developer has in store for the future.

* EDIT: An update was added to allow customizable controls. This helps a lot, though the initial configuration of controls is still enough of an issue to note.

Wasted something like 500 hours in-game playing this when it first came out, and now that it's on Steam, I can relive the horror of wasting my Steam life away!

I can go offline on my friend's list. I can try, but everyone around me knows. They know what I'm doing.

I should mention that even if you enjoy this game, you essentially have to pay for gold bars just to multiply the profits you receive, or make them go faster to keep progressing. Otherwise, you'll literally hit a plateau. If you're stubborn enough to not want to pay, the thrill of raking in money will last oh so quickly.

If you're still wanting to make a commitment to this game, then go ahead, but when the AdVenture Capitalist mascot is standing over you, your money in his hand as he laughs, I can only say "I warned you".

EDIT: So with the new update, you can have a girl avatar. That's a bonus! However, the game is still liable to glitch and crash quite often, so that's a net step back.

Fake Colours is hard. Punishingly hard. It's fun to play casually, but turns frustrating very quickly even as you're taught how to play by the game. It gets to the point at times where you need to quit the game and take a step back to figure out how to solve it. And when you do solve it? It's such a great feeling.

The game looks very nice even for its simplicity, and the ambient music is relaxing enough to calm you but not distracting enough to tear you away from the game while playing. Even with the steep learning curve, it never really feels unfair. Hell, even at its most difficult, it still feels fun going through it and trying to solve each puzzle.