Recent reviews by randomswitchgamer

If you are into deckbuilding roguelikes, this game delivers pretty well.

I love the atmosphere the game provides, but, as we all love about deckbuilding roguelikes is, how the game differs from the rest while maintaining that gameplay we love. And the core mechanic of building the manor and manipulating the room's positions and abilities are great! Trying to defend your home's literal heart in only 28 Days can pose quite a challenge, but also adds a level of thought that is really fun.

The game does however feel small, in regards to other deckbuilding roguelikes. Though there are challenges in adding modifiers to your run, or certain Room upgrades that can make the game more difficult, the loop is kinda just the same. Hopefully maybe some game modes or puzzles or something to make the game feel more...more...

But overall the game is very nice and I do indeed recommend it!

Haven't finished yet, just unlocked level 2, but from the time I've spent playing it (don't look at hours played, I left it running overnight) I really have been enjoying solving the hints. If you like the Witness, its similar, but obviously in it's own way. Definitely use a notepad and pen(cil) if you can, some tried to tell me that I should use a thesaurus or an anagram solver (but I still feel like its a little cheating; no offense to them) so I am happy that I have been able to make my way through this game with minimal help, and if you like that challenge, I recommend you play it that way as well!

VOD for the first stream's playthrough:
https://youtube.com/live/6m6FTh9AFc0

If you're looking for a fun idle game that you can do while getting work done or even playing other games, I've really enjoyed this demo so far, and I have been enjoying playing it with other idle games as well!

BITS has a lot of potential in combinations of chip producing bots and even has some areas that if you aren't ready for it, can really kick your butt. I again, recommend this one for you guys!

I enjoy a good idle game from time to time, and this is an awesome idea to have an idle game on your desktop. Been playing it for a couple days now (Once I've unlocked something that I'll mention in a bit, I've just left my computer on running Rusty's Retirement) and its cool to see how the farm has been coming along!

Three pieces of advice for newer downloaders looking to get ahead quick...

1) Save up for Splunk's House ASAP, this plants seeds automatically, (usually of what you need to grow the next locked produce) Rusty can bang out the watering cropping and sending stuff to make the biofuel.
2) Get the Water Bot, Harvet Bot and Biofuel Bot as well as Haiku's House! Rusty needs help, and these are his best helpers to "Idle" quickly early on. These can be done before you get Splunk's House (That's what I did) but you can totally, if you want, get Splunk's first, it will just take a bit longer).
3) Distract yourself...Once you've done advice points 1 and 2 you're practically done with everything you need to do for the first farm, but things will take time...so go to work, school or do chores or watch a show or youtube or something...when you come back, you'll have unlocked stuff, and just repeat this process...when you have money, bang out some more crop patches and new buildings...but yeah...congrats you've beaten the first farm :D

Rusty's Retirement is an amazing idea, and with other Desktop idle games coming soon, as the typing of this review, I'm looking forward to having a full screen of PC Idlers going while I'm getting some work done on my PC...a definite pickup in my opinion! HECK! You can even play this with ANOTHER Steam game going! probably not recommended as it does take up some space and covers some UI stuff in other games (depending) but it can be done XD

Fun idea...at least I haven't really heard of many if any other, bullet hell 3rd person shooters, and this did that pretty well! Some bugs were found, but in their discord server:

https://discord.gg/b5NgH7UCZj

they are aware and working on it...be careful using the bow in the Tundra for now...I found a skip, but it wasn't fully a skip, as something in the sequence had to happen, but I'm sure speedrunners could find a way to sequence break some things, which I look forward to seeing...

The game posted a few challenges, but overall wasn't too bad, even for someone that doesn't play shooters, and honestly not as many bullet hells...overall it was a fun experience@

though there are some small issues with the game, the game was very enjoyable! The dev was in my stream, and I got to enjoy a great story told, while getting used to the DDR style rhythm game that ramps pretty quickly in difficulty...there are was to cheese through the songs even on hard difficulty, but if you're wanting to leaderboard, each song, you're definitely gonna have to get good!

Great game!

I enjoyed streaming this game and let me tell everyone about it!

https://www.youtube.com/live/sCoGdhXK60c?si=G0sTZ4NrB04neGX6

Playing through I really appreciated that the dev team provides a way for people who easily get motion sick, like myself, a method to help play the game without or with minimal effects...so kudos to the team for this! I enjoyed my current time of the Early Access and have 100% all current levels at the time of me writing this review (4th, February, 2024)

I love the simplistic sky island format and I think the levels look nice, the layout of the tasks per level provides a good challenge and some like the orbs (IYKYK) can be quite annoying, but manageable...The new challenge level (Vast Chamber) was a fresh level as the space around you was the first variation in design and I hope for more of this in the future, cause though I did enjoy the designs, when playing the first levels before Vast Chamber, it started to get repetitive, looking at the same sky with the same islands...even so much as a 3 island chain in level 2 being identical to the same island chain (even in the same location) as level 4, and because of some of these similarities, it got easy to confuse myself where I actually was in some parts of some levels.

However, one great thing that does keep things fresh in the repetitive-ness of the game is the new mechanics as the levels progress; bounce bubbles, rotating the world, rotating structures, etc...This does help find creative ways to place objectives in creative spots, making 100%ing the game much more of a mental challenge then the game initially looks, which to me personally is a great thing.

I think with where the game stands, I would probably place the game at a solid 6/10, definitely not a bad game, but with where we have it, its quite repetitive in design and in performance...BUT! With the release of Vast Chamber alone, kicks this up for me to a solid 6.8/10, and after talking with someone on the Orchid of Redemption staff, I got a hinting towards some awesome things in the future for this game, and so I'm excited and there is definitely room for this game to grow and get a better rating :D

All that being said, I'd still recommend this game for those who like these types of games, and if you ever get the chance to chat with the dev team, you'll know they are pretty awesome and very hard working and I just want to shout them out here, cause they are doing great work!

https://www.youtube.com/live/X8UVqPcBp2k?si=OldtpO4I2zfB3v_T

My opinions on the game are this:
I played solo and felt like it was easily accomplishable with just one person, I think it took me just under 3 hours (the steam puzzle had me for a bit) for me the game was balanced between clues being linear, but also clues having head scratching moments where if you don't have all the currently accessible clues, it can be quite difficult to progress...really make sure you explore every room to its fullest to make sure you don't miss anything...

That being said and this paragraph WILL HAVE SPOILERS! the game felt still quite easy for me...from the start of the game you need a 7 letter code, and there are 2 shapes to help you figure it out, but I looked at one of them and just new the solution (might just be because I'm good at anagrams) but then some things like the colored tapestries had nice puzzle clues, but I felt one of the hidden tapestries was useless cause the task on that one has a pattern that I feel people would do on the machine almost immediately before unlocking that tapestry, so if that hidden one was swapped with the yellow one in the room, I'd like that puzzle even more than I do now, and also having the symbols on the charged gem felt a bit condescending, as the gems are so connected to the tapestries and the triangle symbols appear EVERYWHERE, I feel like I didn't need the charged gems to have that extra handholding...and on the lines of hand holding, though I love the references the "alchemist in the book" speaks out, a lot of times the voice will immediately tell you the solution of the next clue (or at least in my playthrough) and I felt it kind of ruined my own "ah-ha" moment but something that I missed as simple as being able to inventory an item, etc, I felt could have been brought to my attention via the voice, cause I had a lot of time looking around at things and didn't notice the UI prompt that I could do such things, so for the first half of my stream I was carrying things one at a time and not pocketing the items...but that is also me rushing and not looking at the UI fully, so I don't really blame the design of that really...these were my main gripes of the "handholding-ness" this game provides, but...

Where this game thrives is the environment is freaking awesome, the layout of this house? store? temple? sanctorum place? was thoughtout and the time it must have taken to put the specifics of what goes where must be respected! The game is gorgeous...The lore is appreciated but to me ends up being rather pointless...Don't get me wrong, its really cool and I always love that creative motif, however when you have a story that ends with a loop of both you died for no purpose and you troll future yous to interact with the same interactions you JUST DID by becoming apart of the puzzles and/or you go back to basically troll the next yous into the same fates by setting up the lore around you to the same loop...the path you take doesn't matter physically, but lore wise it's still cool...

It seems like I had more bad things to say about the game, but trust me when I say I REALLY enjoyed this game! And I don't want to spoil the great experience but rather provide a cautionary warning of the things that I felt personally could have been different to better my personal experience...I would recommend this to solo players or even to a group of up to 4 like the game allows..even though that feels like it would be too many cooks in the kitchen, I feel like that could lead to chaotic fun! In all honestly I'd give this a solid 7.8/10 and I'd love to reenter this world again!