Recent reviews by Shramper

This was a really solid puzzle game, full of intrigue and character. While Missile Command originally was more real-time, the turn-based aspect of this adaptation was actually quite well done and stressful in it's own way. All in-between that though is the 'escape-room' portions, which helped shake things up, and played really well thematically on the paranoia and tension during the Cold War.
I especially enjoyed the struggle of keeping the friendships you have with the three characters amidst everything, the secret notes and rooms you find, and the climax/ending of the game. All in all, this was a pretty satisfying recreation of the Missile Command IP!

Unless promises and delivers on everything it set itself out to do as a platformer, with a decent price and game time. While anyone could play through all the levels casually, I was quite driven to play each level several times over just to get a better grade, but was never punished or intimidated to get the highest grades per level. While I enjoyed each world with their given mechanics and environments, I felt pretty down when it was all over, and the rest of the game encourages replay for higher scores on a leaderboard, and a shuffle mode to change up the existing levels.

The only things that bothered me about Unless was how the initial bird-freeze mechanic was introduced for the 1st world, which gave me an impression there'd be more 'abilities' like it, or that the game would use more of it. While I appreciated that it wasn't required for the rest of the game, it made me wonder why it was included in the first place. It also had a bit of a learning curve that mightve otherwise slowed down your runs to set up, but it did shake up the basics at the start of the game for me and I was intrigued.
I also felt it was a bit inconsistent to have 9 whole levels for world 3, but the other worlds had only up to 5 levels. I also wanted to have a faster way to 'reset' the level when I would die during a run, and couldn't reset the timer to 0, so you'll be leaving and entering levels quite a bit just to ensure you can start fresh.

Unless is a good time to lose an hour or two in, and further if you feel you can play the game better each run. While I'm not much of a speedrunner in these kinds of games, Unless gave me a taste of that which I can come to appreciate. Try to not compare the game too directly to Celeste, a $30 story-based platformer. The game plays as great as Celeste and meets those gameplay expectations, and that's all it really needs to at it's price point.

We all saw the dedication this community has to ensuring this game's continued popularity and success. It really means that much, and there just hasn't been any greater pleasure in being a part of it, from any other game I've played.
This is managed democracy manifest.

If you have special eyes, this brand of game is just for you. Great for exercising in color theory/palettes, overall very solid in what it offers as a free game. Has customization options for levels, multiplayer (if anyone wants to throw down), and a lot of levels. A great choice of game to play before bed maybe, as it's very calming. Bored? Fix it by picking Pixel Fixel.

(I should disclose that I was a tester, considering my hours played)

Civic Story is Ace Attorney but for Canadian politics.
It is an earnest attempt to make a game that can open up discussion about politics, which is something Canada has been having issues with over the years in regards to voter apathy and lack of participating in elections. Politics in any media generally go deeper in the realm of drama, but Civic Story aims to keep the subject matter more optimistic and potentially engaging, in the hopes to turn a topic relegated to ignorant anger and tribalism, to something with nuanced and open for debate.
If you want to play a visual novel that explores politics in a more friendlier and charming light, or you're one of many that has little faith in politics nowadays, then go play Civic Story and potentially change your perspective. Hopefully the game can encourage you, even if you're not Canadian, to care about democracy.

What a treat this was to play!

Your face will contort with emotions and you'll have to acknowledge them and the positive effects they're having on your brain, which can only be determined by a good video game (and not a potentially dangerous headband that controls your dreams). You'll feel wonder, confusion, joy, annoyance, frustration, sadness, and shock, to a mix of wonky-plonky-sploinky-doinky jingles, artsy-fartsy melodies, and rockin' tunes that are somehow, SOMEHOW, (as the 90s kids might say) Da Bomb.

You're gonna accept Professor Helper for who he truly is, and you're always going to get a neuron activation hearing the Teentopia theme after repeated attempts. You're going to admire these characters from afar, and it's going to suck a lot more than you ever expect it would. Your virtual pets will definitely die, but you will come to ask yourself and accept that they will never get to truly live. You're going to see, install, then delete Beefbrain protection for no reason, and you're going to contemplate (even momentarily) whether Dripp Boy ever made it in the Fungus Scene or not.

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For a while you couldn't watch a game grumps video without this game they helped publish being advertised. So I got it in the recent Summer Sale, played and beat it in maybe 6-7 hours. Is the game worth it?

Homebody is pretty much an escape room, or house if you will, with a time loop mechanic. It's considered a horror game, but due to the time loop, dying eventually isn't scary anymore, and you're just left with the puzzles. Nonetheless, it's absolutely a survival game, as you'll die plenty of times. Horror is there, but it's sidelined for the running narrative and puzzles.

The puzzles were doable, some easier and some harder. The puzzles did get harder and more complex as the game went, and solving them gave easier access so we wouldn't need to go through the puzzles again. Very appreciative, alongside the memory menu so you can revisit clues you've uncovered overtime. I suspended my belief enough to just roll with a lot of the puzzles, but I eventually settled on using a guide for much of the water pump ones as I just couldn't get it.

The narrative is mostly about mental illness, which is standard for a horror game, but because the overall feeling of 'horror' itself died with the time loop mechanic, much of any of the cutscenes and extra details that explores anxiety, ocd, etc, didn't feel very impactful. I was too GAME GRUMPY solving the puzzles and getting frustrated, that I was too indignant to care about the main characters woes. I liked the other characters, they had their own thing going and history with the main character. Who the hell knows what Pete's deal is, and the owner of the house felt like he had a more interesting backstory I wanted to explore.

You play Outer Wilds, another loopy-mystery game, and eventually accumulate enough knowledge about whats going and what to do, enough so that you can know how to beat the game immediately. But that knowledge isn't literal answers to puzzles, most of them are 'story beats' that add a lot of context and backstory. The main mechanic had reasonings for it's existence that you eventually uncovered and could even change. Homebody doesn't have this, but I've seen it try. It's just a lot more fun exploring space, existentialism, and quantum physics, than a mansion, mental illness, and visual math.

Maybe I'm too used to mental illness being explored more abstractly and with a bit more tact (unless stigmatizing), otherwise I fail to relate to the main character here. Even harder so, when the themes feel too subjective and expressed from the developers. Instead of feeling for the main character and their problems, I feel like I'm gazing a bit into the developers own problems instead through the main character. It made me feel bad that I couldn't relate or emphasize with the character, knowing all the work and writing spent to make them so had to have come from a personal and very likely 'actual' place. But they made a game about it now, so things are all better... right? What are game developers if not shut-ins? (especially indie ones)

The game is well made, and I'm glad I bought and played it. The art looks great and the sound design really helped sell the environment much of the time. Mental Illness is a heavy personal focus, so it will be very evident that exploring the developer(s) personal mental illness and expressing it into this game, came before a lot of the game's design. Is that unusual for a horror game? Absolutely not. But again, was this really a horror game? Come find out for yourself.

I backed this game on Kickstarter in February 2018, then somehow promptly forgot about it and never played it until only recently. I just knew that it looked really great and it would be a colony-sim which I'm a big fan of.

Playing it currently is rough, being in early access and only developed by two people. Despite the few bugs, the game does work! It can be a slow and rough start if you don't know what you're doing, and the game doesn't warn you about directly, such as viruses, cuddler infections, space madness, etc. You're going to lose a few times before you actually have a good foothold on meeting your colonists needs like food, morale, and sleep. It usually ends with a base that's a mess, with everything broken, unpowered, and probably blood and puke everywhere. It's horrible, but avoidable.

When you get some momentum going; you start earning crystals and expanding your base, exploring/scavenging the asteroids around it, doing contracts, fighting off invasions of space zombies, bots, and slimes, creating your own defensive viruses, making an arcade/casino, etc. It feels good to conquer the prior issues and have a self sufficient colony. But most importantly for me, decorating your colony is really expansive and interesting in Starmancer. No top-down or sidescroller interpretations like it's competition, working with a low-poly pixel art textured look really sells the idea you're building a base, and visiting abandoned space stations, med labs, and space casinos! The art here is *chef's kiss*

It has bugs as any early access game will have, and sometimes it'll be hard to tell whether it's an actual bug, or the colonists simply too busy or prioritizing other things. I've had colonists constantly cancel their move actions and go nowhere, colonists that wouldn't create certain items even when all the ingredients were available, and even bases that would drown in larval husks waiting to turn into eggs. I won't lie, it's very frustrating, but I know that playing everything worked just fine up until these moments, and they will be dealt with as development progresses. Also just figuring out what went wrong and to generally avoid it. I think that's called 'learning' but I haven't checked.

This game fits right in-between what I want to see from Rimworld and Oxygen Not Included. I still love and play Rimworld up until end-game where things can grind to a halt (in which I start again from beginning), while Oxygen Not Included I could never work out gases and any meaningful expansion. Progressing in Starmancer looks and feels more rewarding and earned than I feel in both Rimworld and Oxygen Not Included. It doesn't demand you to conquer the environment, in as much as exploring systems, creating and selling goods, and dealing with monsters and viruses.

There's a roadmap that looks exciting, the devs do devblogs when they can and stream their work every week, so it's being actively developed, and it has charm and potential to it! Even after pledging then forgetting about it, I'm glad it didn't go to waste. I eagerly wait to see what more can from this game, especially if they work in modding in the near future!

What a beautiful experience. This clearly meant a lot to the developers, and it'll mean a lot to you too.

Yes and No.

Your first 40-50 hours are fantastic. Game is really tightly designed, everything ties in nicely, and it's all set to a gorgeous backdrop with such lighting that makes it hardly matter what resolution the textures are, or the poly count of the models. The game's combat is usually underestimated in difficulty, but all the enemies are readable and can be defeated appropriately. The world has fun little ruins, abandoned villages, runestones with tips, and dungeons/saves to loot stuff in. It didn't take me long whatsoever to see the appeal and to dig some time into the game.

Then progress stops. At least for me. 100 hours in, 3 different worlds that have been vastly explored, many deaths in nearly every biome to nearly every creature, and I just cannot find a crypt.

You need a crypt to get Iron. Otherwise you're stuck in the bronze age and effectively too weak to fight against a majority of the monsters set in the other biomes (let alone trolls, its been cool trying to fight 3 at once one time). You either travel outwards, which usually ends up requiring you to sail on a raft and entirely dependant on the wind (which I rather like, but mid travel makes me a nice snack for sea-serpents so thanks for that). My gameplay was grinding to a halt, and dying further and further away from the countless camps and bases connected by a dozen different portals made me less and less motivated to continue playing.

I really like this game, and could probably just join someone else's world which has crypts, but i shouldn't have to rely on coop play just to find resources... for boss fights definitely but there's gotta be some solo-options. With bronze and tin so damn common in the Black Forest and iron rare as hell in swamps, isn't iron the most abundant metal on Earth? I get that we need a progression for armour and weapons, but holy hell is this such a bottleneck for progression. I wish it didn't upset me but it does!

TL;DR The game is very good but has a ♥♥♥♥ bottleneck between bronze tech and iron tech, with crypts in swamps containing having too low spawn rates. Get the game anyway since it'll no doubt get adjusted further down the road, but prepare yourself for a lot of running, walking, jumping, chopping, building, sleeping, eating, sailing, and dying.