Recent reviews by Friday Night Gandalf

fish fear me. women feel ambivalent about me. i love me.

NOTE: If you're reading this review a few months after its writing date, it's probably outdated. I intend to revisit the game once it's had a few bigger updates.

---

A very promising and entertaining early access title. In short, think of a mix between Stardew Valley, Starbound, and the game Mutiny by Nitrome (an old browser game that like 6 people remember, but which I dearly love). Though, in the game's current state, think of it as an extended tech demo - it's l oozing with potential, and the developer (yes, there's only one!) has a lot of good ideas, but these things take time.

The exploration and naval combat are very fun. Sea battles are semi-autobattlers, for lack of a better description - you direct which weapons fire at which element of the enemy ship, and they fire on their own. There's a much stronger focus on micromanaging your crew instead, with you picking their targets, sending them to repair hull breaches or to pump water. There is a levelling system for crew members, where you can specialise them - though honestly, dumping most of your points into reload speed skill kinda trivialises the early game difficulty entirely.

Your ship has slots of certain size, and you basically slot in weapons and ship upgrades in them accordingly. The system isn't very complicated, but it does its job well.

On islands, you'll spend most of the time exploring and talking to characters. The only land 'combat' currently is rats, bats, and snakes. There's a couple of simple quests to go on currently, and the writing in them is funny and charming.

What I found particularly impressive was how the NPCs seem to live lives of their own - they have their own routines for each day of the week, not unlike the NPCs in Stardew Valley. You can't *do* much with them currently, but the developer is very clearly passionate about making the world feel immersive, and I suspect the portion of the game where you develop your own home island, once its made, will also have similarly immersive NPCs.

The home island and its base building features are currently very undercooked, but a lot seems to be planned - including recruiting villagers, building your own defences, and withstanding enemy raids against your base. As of current, your home base allows you to farm (broadly useless currently), recruit new crew (a new NPC appears every once in a while in a rotation), craft ship upgrades (weapons etc.), and trade with a wandering merchant kind of guy who sells unique ships.

The most rewarding element of islands is exploration and treasure-hunting. The dopamine scratches the brain just right when you find freestanding or buried treasure chests. You can dig for treasure on islands while exploring. Most of the time you'll get just stone, but sometimes you'll find artifacts, or locked chests. These usually contain money, valuables, and crafting materials. The lockpick minigame is a little obnoxious and could use better indicators - but again, there's potential in that.

Death feels fairly inconsequential currently. You get sent to a sort of 'Davy Jones Locker' kind of world where there's a big white whale who acts as the underworld keeper. He has his own collectibles quest related to fish, but you can't complete it at the moment due to lack of certain fishing functions, I think. Nevertheless - dying makes you lose nothing but money at the current stage. Past a certain gameplay stage, it becomes trivial. I've started using death as a fast travel method, because the more labyrinthine parts of the map are tricky (and sometimes annoying) to navigate, and dying is just a faster way of getting home.

Though, consequences might change in the future. I believe, based on the current crafting system prices, some stuff is in 'debug' mode - almost every ship craftable upgrade costs the same at home base regardless of power. A 1,000 gold cannon and a 25,000 gold cannon probably shouldn't require the exact same materials to craft...

Oh, there's also a bounty system in the game - think of these as bossfights, basically. They're neat little challenges that make you adapt your ship to different circumstances. There's 7 of them currently, each of them different in their own way. The coolest part is that at the end of your encounter, you can claim the bounty's ship as your own - they usually come with cool extra features, like an integrated cannon, or magic shield, or a hull that pumps water on its own without requiring crew.

---

In total, it took me about 11 hours to experience about 95% of the content in the game's current state. Some quests seem bugged and/or unfinished, but thats reasonable given the game is in veeeery early access right now. There's a lot of rough edges as stands - but with some polish, and added features down the road (co-op multiplayer and multi-ship battles would be AMAZING in this - please!), this could easily become an all-time Hall of Fame game for me. Game is absolutely oozing with potential, and I can't wait to see what it looks like after a few major update cycles. Especially excited for the home island defence gameplay.

Support the developer if you like the project! It's all made by one guy! Having friends in gamedev myself, I can tell you it's very difficult to handle solo projects that have this much ambition.

Despite being in early access, this is already a fairly solid system-agnostic mapmaking tool that covers most bases for mediaeval fantasy - spare for interiors (my one gripe for the time being). The unique aesthetic is definitely a strong selling point (I *love* a unifying aesthetic in my maps!), and following the creator's progress on social media, it seems like they've got some interesting features planned in the future, Can't wait to see what else gets added - I strongly think that with workshop support, and interior editing, this could easily become the top-dog map tool for DMs and GMs of any system.

A very cosy, relaxing, short, and yet still touching game. Very easy to get lost wandering in the loopingly endless world (which, by the way, is very cleverly put together!). You can tell the developer poured their heart and soul into the game, especially the atmosphere and bittersweet narrative (yes, there's a narrative - I also thought this was just a funny bug catching game at first!).

In terms of gameplay, took me about 2.5h to do all achievements (I actually could have finished the game after maybe 1.5 hours but I went the extra mile). Game's short, but it makes you slow down, sit down, relax, and reflect a little.

If you're looking to kill some hours skipping and hopping around like a frog catching critters and reflecting on the fragility of life - this is the game for you.

Maybe the French government had it right all along. Video games *are* art.

---

UN JOUR JE SERAI DE RETOUR PRÈS DE TOI 💖

A very novel concept (a roguelike autobattler - can you believe that?) executed incredibly well. Takes a decent degree of strategising to become powerful (and healthy) enough to beat the boss at the end of each level. Each of the classes also offers a different playstyle, too.

Also, the soundtrack is an absolute banger and is full of JoJo references. Give the soundtrack a listen even if you don't intend to buy the game - you won't be disappointed.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

With excellent writing, an incredible story, a superb soundtrack and addictive gameplay, Hades is definitely my Game of the Year, if not of this entire decade. Genre-redefining, Supergiant Games really took the concept of roguelites, flipped the formula on its side, and polished it to a mirror shine.

Supergiant Games only comes to show that even in the modern market, with enough dedication and skill, indie developers can top the best-funded triple-A industry giants. If you're surprised about the 98% overall rating (which has been there since day 1!), just play the game - you'll find out why >;3c

lanque's character is an 180 degree turn from your expectations, regardless of which route you take...

and the soleil twins are sweet murderous little babbies whom i must protecc.





a satisfactory finale that leaves an empty gaping void in your chest (especially if you've already read and played through all of Homestuck and Hiveswap already), at least until you find another temporary obsession...



NOW THAT HIVESWAP'S OVER, I will find out where Andrew Hussie lives, arrive at his doorstep and Cry. you've done it again you bastard.







(btw if your thing *still* won't show up despite buying it, delete your friendsim folders, reinstall and reopen the game)

Splendid work as always from What Pumpkin Games (though I did stumble upon a runtime error, but that's a one-off).

The artwork for this episode's pretty rich and there's a good bit of cheeky meta humour.
Daraya's a precious goth gal and a very good lesbiab, I approve wholeheartedly.

Nihkee could basically crush my head any day of the week (she is MUCH more swoler than in the Trollcall card but that's a bonus, baby)

Couple of cheeky references to popular memes in Daraya's episode, (that's how it is on this bintch of an Earth); while her good route has a bit of awkward shuffling, it comes through pretty well in the end and has a sweet cameo (though her bad route is really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ grim).

Couple of cheeky references to Homestuck in Nihkee's episode (all of which Really Uh Blitzed My Chakras), with the two main endings being really satisfactory.

endgame HOMESTUCK spoilers ahead tho (you've been WARNED) (it keeps happening bro)
(also obviously SPOILERS for the Nihkee part of the episode!):
Nihkee's alternative (can't really call it 'bad', can we?) route is one of those funky metagame bits i love so much in the Friendsim. The whole train of thought and process of 'finding your river' that the MSPA Reader experiences in their stolen Scuttlebuggy is heavily reminescent of one particular character from Homestuck, though they acquired those powers after entering the Medium.

That's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ right, I'm talking Terezi Pyrope over here, the Seer of Mind herself. The potential outcomes and timelines, all tied together by causality, explored by Terezi in the doomed timeline where Latula takes the Ring of Life, were very much alike rivers and their tributaries - i think that's even what they're described as at one point in the comic.

This kind of ability of seeing alternative timelines/outcomes was displayed in previous episodes - except unlike in the previous attempts of the MSPA Reader at bending the outcome, they actually succeed seeing the possible consequences, and end up successfully averting disaster. Considering how harshly the universe seems to punish deviations from the alpha timeline, this comes off as a surprise. We only see this kind of character progression in God-tiers at the very end-game of Homestuck. what kind of implications does this have for MSPA Reader, someone who isn't even playing Sburb/Sgrub and is merely an avatar of a player behind the screen? granted, i might just be digging too deep into a semicanonical/fanon game, but hey, you can never be sure about such things when Hussie has his claws on it. i'm very certain a really interesting final episode awaits us - the penultimate early Christmas gift...

all in all i give it a convergence of my favourite lesbiabs/10, can't wait for the final instalment