Recent reviews by lpsmith

I liked the story of this game, and thought the controls were terrible. And the themes of the game kind of contracted at the end to not be as interesting to me as they started off. But I appreciated the majority of my time with the game, and particularly liked the 'Homeless' and 'Navajo' chapters.

I backed this game and am very satisfied with the results. The characters are interesting, the worldbuilding pulled me in, the songs are fun, and the interactivity was solid; I definitely felt like I was leading the story where I wanted it to go.

This is a pretty solid game! The interface is solid; the clue-finding system is interesting and thematic. The characters are interesting, and I cared about what happened in the story. The story beats were also interesting and compelling, and there were a reasonable number of twists as the story progressed, which were surprising but never felt like they were completely unclued or came out of left field.

My only problem with the game was the ending, where I felt like something larger had been hinted at that didn't end up playing out, and the story stakes collapsed for me to something that felt a little more mundane than I had hoped for. But I still enjoyed my time with the game.

Basically the only three words you need for this are 'More Cave Johnson'.

While I found the first episode a bit janky but oddly compelling, this one was equally janky and oddly uncompelling. Still played it to the end, wanting to get my $1.89's worth out of it, but too many parts just seemed off. I was pulled out of the world every time the characters walked down a street in broad daylight when we know if anyone sees them, they're done for, or any time I couldn't use a thing because the game wasn't ready for me to use it. The last bits of the game seemed particularly forced in terms of story, but I didn't quite believe the characters throughout the game, either. Overall, vaguely annoying. If another chapter ever comes out, I hope it redeems this one, but given the reception, I kind of doubt the company will be able to come up with the cash to do so, which is kind of sad. There were some good ideas in here, that collectively were less than the sum of their parts.

I enjoyed several playthroughs of this. It's basically a you-vs-map boardgame of post-apocalypse survival. The themes were solid, the enemies tough but reasonable; enough that it was satisfying to beat them, and the sense of accomplishment as you built stuff was solid.

The controls for this game are a little janky, and I felt like it abandoned the most interesting part of its premise in act 2. But somehow it drew me in despite this, and I enjoyed the story it presented. In many places, it did a particularly good job of presenting the exploration -> understanding -> mastery chain, which is always satisfying (explore a new area, figure out what's going on, use what you've learned to accomplish something).

A short but interesting game with a well-characterized protagonist, and a fun mechanic for solving puzzles. I would say that it leaned a little too heavily to the one-use-only items (which was kind of galling when a new puzzle required an item very similar to something you threw away for no reason three puzzles ago), and I didn't feel like it quite deserved its ending, particularly after setting things up to have a different outcome from the parking lot (he said vaguely, trying to avoid spoilers). But overall solid, and I appreciated the time I spent on it.

A mostly-'cosy' side-scroller with interesting mechanics, puzzles, and aesthetics. It does a good job of teaching you things, then letting you use that information in new contexts. The lore of the world plays out in an understated way in the background throughout.

This was a reasonably fun game with two modes: mode 1 is 'shoot things' and mode 2 is 'shoot things that you already killed but have already respawned'. If shooting things sounds like fun to you, you will probably enjoy this game.