Recent reviews by prox

good.

edit 30/11: very good.

a game i come back to over and over again

I once joked, when Failbetter asked what they should do next, that I'd like a dating sim for The Masters, so of course I backed this on Kickstarter! It was super cool that I finally got to realize my longstanding Fallen London dream of romancing Mr Pages. It was also really exciting, as a huge King/Manager fan, to get more content for them.

Unfortunately I put the game down out of frustration with how my choices didn't seem to actually result in expected outcomes, and haven't found the motivation to pick it back up. Multiple times I had a weird moment where I would pick that I wanted to kiss or other overt options and get told we maybe weren't there yet - that's fine - but then the game would act like I'd been successful. I bought and installed a contraption to hang myself upside down and both during and afterwards the game seemed confused by our relationship, and my journal doesn't reflect this development at all. I was running multiple romances and nobody seemed to care, which was a little odd, but I couldn't accurately keep track of how anyone felt about me and I didn't feel like I had control over my outcomes. When I can't save and go back to repeat a storyline and see if it's a bug or merely a poor choice, this becomes a massive flaw.

I will give the team huge props for their very careful and inclusive writing during intimate scenes - there was always room for my character to change their mind, it didn't demand a certain configuration, in one particular encounter I was able to choose to give and not to receive - it was really fun to explore the kind of variance that isn't often seen in dating sims. That and the various intersectional identities of the characters was the kind of inclusiveness I've really come to expect from Failbetter.

Ultimately at this point the gameplay falls too short for me to recommend it, but I also remember struggling with Sunless Sea in the early early beta release, and then returning a few patches later to discover a new fave game, so hopefully I'll come back in a few months, give it another college try, and end up sinking a bunch more hours into it.

Autist Simulator (complimentary).

I opted to go into this totally unspoiled, which has made it slow going - I think I played for six hours and unlocked several rooms before I worked out how to "solve" books I'd catalogued and get some skills, and I needed to get a reminder letter before I wrote back to the Trustees. So I'm really only at the beginning of the game at the time of this review. It makes me feel silly a lot, but that just means when I have a breakthrough it's so, so gratifying!

PROS: Aesthetically marvellous. Love the writing and lore. The lack of time pressure is so relieving and lets me just untangle the puzzle without the anxiety of a roguelike's punishments. I learn from my mistakes by trying again the next day rather than starting from the beginning again - that's really enjoyable for me. I love the feeling of going from granular zoomed in detail to overlooking the whole game and all my timers. The little button that neatly sorts the cards in each holding area is wonderful.

CONS: Everything I listed as a con has been fixed or updated with patches - such kind and consistent dev attention is such a boon! No notes (aside from the endless notetaking I do to track my play)

i have 300 hours here and another 300 on my switch because this is THEE game. never boring, never stagnant, always challenging even as i feel myself getting better and better. people in the old days who used to play solitaire would have their ♥♥♥♥♥ blown right off by this one, it is better than tetris, it is one of my all time favourite games just because of how much i've gotten out of it even though it's very simple compared to a triple a game with fancy graphics and an immersive story. "foolish, foolish" and "suffer." are also now forever part of my friend group's vocabulary. basically: get this game!

goobert best boy

i would like to kiss lt detective kim kitsuragi on the mouth

also the game is good

at first as i did a little tour of about ten odd cities i wasn't sure i really loved it, but i'm a SS fan and it was nice to have something similar-yet-different.

then i cut my own heart out of my chest to save my crew, and visited the city of angels, and saw a map of how many locations there really are to find, sold a robot a box of my sexy memories, and lost enough sanity that the game started flickering and all the crew text changed, and. well. somewhere in all that i realized what a treasure this is.

it took me a little to get into it, primarily because even selecting "tutorial mode" the conveyance of initial info is AWFUL, the open world sandbox nature meant i didn't even visit the city of keys for a good few hours of play, and even after a few goes in combat i still find that overly complex and unsatisfying. but there seems like there is just so much to explore, and
the writing is pretty unparalleled and i so far love all the quests and storylines. being able to flee enemies into a different map is a godsend and all the little abstract items, stories and memories and feelings and the way they interact with each other and the world, are just, so good.


i forsee this game eating a loooot of my time in future.

played this through its difficult beginnings and it has evolved to walk that perfect roguelike line of captivatingly challenging. the richness of story is everything i would expect from failbetter and then some - isle of cats is a particular fave.


edit, 27 august 2017
recently i bought the zubmariner dlc and it is amazing, helped me fall in love with the map all over again. it's the first time the game has genuinely scared me instead of just ratcheting up the tension of survival; the constant companion moves in that awful buglike way and the way it shows up suddenly with the noises can be real upsetting. i also love how deep into FL lore zubmariner goes, and being able to realize my dream of romancing a clay person (my personal favourite faction in the FL universe) was particularly great. thanks for a really rewarding dlc.