Recent reviews by spaceseeker19

Recommendation: A pretty solid console-style RPG with lots of side quests, a reasonably complex story, really big maps, easy leveling, and odd character art.

Recommendation: A fun hidden object game that is incrementally better than the ones that came before it.

Critique: The first thing that stands out about this Artifex Mundi game is the great 3D animation, which we've seen only in Grim Legends before this (and weirdly NOT in Grim Legends 2). The creepy "deepfake" stretching animation for making characters talk is still present, but it is improved tremendously by being performed/positioned on 3D models of characters.

The puzzles in this game are straightforward but challenging, without the confusion that appears in a lot of the other games. There are a few language/translation errors (no part of that cloth is "black!"), but they don't appear in the hidden object scenes, so you're never in a position of looking for an object that isn't there, because the thing on the screen actually has a different name. Needless to say, that's a HUGE improvement!

Grim Legends and Grim Legends 2 both had clear roots in specific folk mythology; it's not as clear to me whether the legend of a koshmaar comes from any real-world myths or folk tales. "Koshmaar" means "nightmare" in several Slavic languages, but beyond that, there is no specific regional/cultural legend involving a demon from the world of dreams that uses masks to enslave people.

I also found the story in this game to be a bit more coherent than in most of the previous Artifex Mundi games; there are twists and reversals, but they actually make a good deal more sense than the others have.
That's not to say that it all makes sense, of course: there are still incongruities and inexplicable events (like "How did Gabriel get into the Doctori's office?"), but they're relatively few and far between.

The English voice acting is also mostly an improvement, though it is weird that the person performing the main character, Sylvia, chose to perform a British accent, whereas everyone else in the game is American (including Gabriel, Sylvia's brother). And the actor portraying Alonzo has an outrageously fake accent, which is meant to be....Spanish, maybe?

Review: Sylvia is a member of The Order, a group of mystical hunters who guard the world from supernatural threats and wear clothes with a strong Assassin's Creed aesthetic. Her mentor is Solomon. As the game begins, Sylvia has recently recovered from an injury that blanked her memory, and she gradually recovers details of her life as the game continues. Solomon is concerned; the master of the Order has sent the two of you to track down Gabriel, Sylvia's apostate brother, who has rebelled against the Order before. This time, though, Gabriel is trying to get his hands on the Incarceri stone, a crystal prison that contains a captured koshmaar from the dimension of nightmares. Koshmaar are very powerful, and pacts with them can grant vast mystical powers, but any such contact with an imprisoned koshmaar runs the risk of the demonic monster escaping and bringing hell to earth. It turns out that Gabriel tricks Solomon and Sylvia into leading him to the Incarceri stone, which he steals and uses in an attempt to bring back his dead lover, Camilla. But the koshmaar manifests as a maskwraith, possessing several people that Sylvia has to free (using a fun complete-the-stained-glass-picture puzzle mechanic) over the course of the game. Midway through the game, you catch up to Gabriel, who regrets what he has done and agrees to help fix the problem he's created. He's also surprised to see you, because you died before the game began, and he used the Incarceri stone to resurrect you in a ritual that Solomon interrupted (and so he thought he had failed to bring you back to life). At the end of the game, though, Solomon is possessed, and hands the Incarceri crystal over to the koshmaar inhabiting Camilla's body. The koshmaar breaks the stone, but Gabriel repairs it while Sylvia makes a mystical incense to drive the koshmaar out of Camilla's corpse and back into the stone. The game ends when Gabriel sacrifices himself and dies as the koshmaar lashes out as it is sucked back into the stone.

The bonus chapter follows Gabriel as he is trapped within the Incarceri stone, and he figures out a way to escape the prison from within. At the end of the bonus chapter, his dead body reanimates as his spirit returns to his earthly vessel.

Recommendation: A great typing game with a charming aesthetic and RPG elements.

Critique: One of the things that I really appreciate about this game that is better than its predecessor, Epistory, is that there are no achievements or mechanics that require attaining a certain typing speed, nor is a level of typing accuracy a requisite. You are never blocked from continuing the game because you can't quite hit a target number...

Where Epistory is a quasi-adventure game, Nanotale is a quasi-RPG. As you explore the world and interact with it, you gain experience, and each time you gain a level of experience, you get a new spell that you can type in combat to achieve some kind of special effect. This leads, in a small way, to a Metroidvania-like mechanic where you revisit areas you've already completed and are able to access things that you couldn't reach previously. As cool as that is, there is very little of that backtracking, and you don't need to do any backtracking to complete the story.

There are two ways to unlock abilities, both involving exploration: first, the story advances only when you complete environmental puzzles wherein you must find and step on pressure plates. These pressure plates are linked to magical founts that heal an area of the dark magic that has drained life (and, visibly, color) from an area. You have to do these to advance the game, and each fount that you restore gives you a new spell. The other method is optional: as you wander the lands, you can take naturalist notes on different flora and fauna that you encounter. If you complete all the entries for a particular species, you get a new spell. These are completely optional; you can complete the story without engaging with this naturalist aspect of the game at all. But, being a completionist, I took notes on everything I could find. I amassed so many abilities by the end of the game that I had a LOT of different choices for how to defeat the waves of enemies that assaulted me. More spells = more tactics for achieving your goals. I had so many abilities by the end of the game, that there were some that I still haven't tried!

Recommendation: Quite possibly the best hidden object game I've played.

Critique: This is a great hidden object game that manages to avoid most of the issues that other such games have, while being fundamentally the same kind of game as anything produced by the big HOG studios like Artifex Mundi. Season of Mystery: the Cherry Blossom Murders is more of the same, but it's just slightly better. Right at the start, I have to point out that there are no crows in this game at all. Well....I guess that's not entirely true, as there is one screen that has a crow in it that might be included in a list of objects to find. But the crow doesn't feature in the story, it doesn't appear in any cutscene, and it is in no way a harbinger of doom: all things that are constants in the hidden object genre. I should also point out that there's no supernatural element in this game at all. "Whaaat?" you say, "Can it even be considered a hidden object game if there isn't a vengeful ghost or a reincarnated villain??!?" Well, you might like that refrain in all the hidden object games, but I found this game - with its straightforward murder mystery and no magic or mysticism at all - very refreshing.

I also appreciate that this game introduces some variety into the type of mini-game landscape. There are a couple of logic puzzles in this game! Granted, they're not at all complex, but I have to laud any studio that adds something different to the HOG formula.

There's also no creepy deepfake CGI in this game. Bravo! Bravissimo! All the cutscenes are static images with subtitled text, like comic strip panels, and there is no voice acting, good (the rarity) or bad (the norm).

The game is fairly short, but each hidden object screen is filled with many, many objects so that, each time you come to a screen, you get very few repeats. I should also point out that there are instances of "what could this word 'fabric' mean?" where you don't actually know what you're trying to find because there are SO MANY POSSIBILITIES, but that problem is preventing from being frustrating by the fact that you can click on the word and the game shows you a silhouette of the particular item you are trying to find on that screen. So even though you have 20 different styles of wrenches in the game, you can always know which type you are trying to find...and you don't HAVE TO have that clue, either: it only appears if you click on the word. So you can play most of the game on your own, without any help. But if you do want that help, there's no penalty for that clue, either.

That's good, because some of the objects are hidden in particularly diabolical ways. Objects will be nestled in a background of almost exactly the same color, and/or they will be placed on a part of the background that nearly exactly matches their shape. Sometimes multiple objects will overlap, too, so you can't assume that "I haven't found anything in this area yet - it's probably here!" It's a wonderful challenge without ever getting to the point of fury.

The presentation of the characters is a bit odd. Everything about the protagonist and her husband read like they are British, but the protagonist is repeatedly referred to as "American." Playing the game, we would read the dialogue aloud, and we never had any idea what kind of accent/dialect to use. It's enigmatic.

Overall, it's fun, has solid gameplay, plays quickly, and feels different enough to seem fresh.

Review: After her husband's death is ruled a suicide by the Japanese police, foreign national Mrs. Irene Pemberton nevertheless suspects foul play and conducts an investigation of her own.

Recommendation: A fun word game that combines elements of Boggle, Scrabble, and CRPGs.

Critique: Letter Quest plays like Boggle: you are presented a bunch of random letters, and you have to use them to form English words. Unlike Boggle (or most word games based on it, like Bookworm), you do not have to form words using adjacent letters. You can type the letters on your keyboard or click them with the mouse pointer; using the keyboard makes the game play much faster. There is no time limit, however: you can take your time to find better words. The frame for this word play is that you are a junior Grim Reaper who is fighting their way through a winding dungeon of monsters, and you form words to deal damage to your foes.

The element that is taken from Scrabble is the letter value: letters can be worth 1 (common), 2 (uncommon), or 3 (rare) points, which count toward the damage that you deal to a monster when you submit a word.

The CRPG elements are that your character and your foes have hit points (HP), each battle you win earns you experience points (XP) and crystals, and you use the crystals and XP to improve your character's abilities.

Battles: In a battle, when you submit a word, it does damage to your opponent, which is subtracted from its HP. If it still has a positive number of HP, it takes an action (which is usually an attack that does your character damage). If you ever take enough damage for your HP to be reduced to zero, you lose that level. Once you've completed a level, it is marked on the map, and you can select that level again in the future so you don't have to start from the very beginning every time you play. Some of the levels include fights with "boss monsters:" especially tough foes that have special defenses and/or special attacks. Special defenses usually involve reducing the amount of damage from all words in a particular category. For instance, they could take no damage from 3-letter words, or take reduced damage from any words that don't contain a double letter ('EE' or 'SS' or 'TT,' for example). Special attacks are things that alter your selection of letters, including: turning a bunch of the letters into the same letter (such as "Z"), poison tiles (some of the letters turn green and will do damage to you as well as your foe), plague tiles (some of the letters turn red, do no damage, and will "infect" adjacent tiles if they're not used), petrified tiles (some of the letters turn to stone and can't be played), spin tiles (some of the letters are inverted, making them slightly harder to read), and tornado tiles (some of the letters are marked with a twister and will randomly change each turn if they aren't played).

Awards: When you complete a level - usually a chain of several monsters - your character is awarded crystals and XP. The crystals are currency that you use to buy weapons, potions, and books. There are no purchases you can make that cost real money; everything uses the crystals that you earn by completing levels in the game.

Weapons: You can equip one weapon at a time, and each weapon has an effect on gameplay: some do more damage, some provide healing, some increase the XP earned, some increase the crystals you earn. Some of the weapons are unlocked by paying a fee of crystals, others are unlocked by achieving in-game goals.

Potions: Potions are items that you can use once that give a temporary benefit: healing your character, reducing the damage of enemy attacks, increasing the damage of your attacks, etc. You have a limit on how many potions you can carry, which can be increased by spending crystals.

Books: Books are key items that you purchase using crystals; each one provides a permanent boost to your character, and the XP that you earn by completing levels is automatically applied to improving/"leveling up" the book(s) you have equipped. There are more books than you can equip at one time, so part of the fun is choosing which book(s) to equip to help you with your particular play-style. Are you going to focus on playing longer words? There's a book for that. Are you going to focus on forming words with high-value letters? There's a book for that, too.

Letter Quest is a great game, and a must-have for any fan of word games.

Recommendation: A fun-but-stressful game that subverts the spatial puzzle genre.

Critique: It's fun to play a game that is so reminiscent of Tetris that also manages to reintroduce the stress and anguish of the first time you ever played a game like that. This is because the game is simultaneously the same and very, VERY different. It knows it is subverting the genre, winking broadly when it presents the familiar Tetris shapes. The genius of it is that the shapes don't really matter! As with Tetris, each shape consists of 4 or 5 blocks stuck together in different configurations. But as soon as the shape touches the bottom, it collapses into an equal volume of particles which behaves something like grains of sand would: they stack like sand dunes and flow down slopes. The orientation and the actual starting shape has very little bearing on what happens to the grains of sand. So it is subtly different from Tetris: you are still trying to complete "rows" of one color for points (and to keep playing), but the row isn't necessarily perfectly horizontal. Instead, as long as you can draw a continuous line of the same color grains from the left and right edges of the play area, you will complete the "row" no matter how convoluted a path you need to take. It draws upon a different, non-rectilinear spatial awareness. I find it engaging and entertaining.

I also really appreciate every game that isn't bloated to more than 1GB in size.

Recommendation: A fun bullet hell shmup - like Asteroids with powerups - that plays in exactly 10 minutes.

Critique: Only after I finished this game did I realize that it is a spiritual successor to "Vampire Survivors," despite literally having "Survivors" in the name. That's because there are a few additional features that make it a so much better game from my perspective that I couldn't see the comparison.

"Vampire Survivors" is a blend of Daleks and Robotron 2084: you have an ever-increasing number of enemies who move toward you in a straight line (as in "Daleks"), but you eliminate them by shooting them with weapons that fire continuously (as in "Robotron 2084").

Cozy Space Survivors improves on this by:
- adding humor to the game. It's cute and funny!
- adding quests to the game. As you explore the map, you will find NPCs that need help with a particular task. If those tasks are completed, you get a reward (usually a ton of experience). Each quest is unique: it plays differently than any other quest, and completing them changes the map in interesting ways.
- adding visible & trackable loot boxes that indicate what kind of loot they contain. Knowing that a loot box is in a particular location can help you make informed guesses for what to pick up next.
- adding ships that have much greater variety than any of the character choices in "Vampire Survivors." Each ship plays so differently that you have to learn four different ways to play the game.
- adding a time limit. If you last ten minutes in Cozy Space Survivors, you win! Having that boundary is a huge blessing. It makes this game a welcome alternative to much bigger games that take half an hour or more to make any progress.

Including all of these additional features in one game is a HUGE improvement over the other games that I've played in this genre.

Recommendation: A decent hidden object game that avoids most of the pitfalls present in many previous Artifex Mundi games.

Critique: This game should be called "Mythic Wonders: Something is Missing Here" instead, because you will constantly get the message "Something is missing here" throughout the game (I'm not kidding - if you see this message much fewer than 50 times in the game, I'll be very much surprised).

Does this have a completely bonkers story?
Yes. (But it's entertaining.)
Does it have howlingly bad CGI for the cut scenes?
Absolutely. (But it's better than a lot of the others.)
Does it have illogical solutions to puzzles that ignore other items that would work better in your inventory?
Sure. (But they're very, very consistent AND sometimes you will actually keep a tool to use again later!!!!)

There are some irritating things that are blissfully absent in this game:
- there's no instances of the wrong word being used to describe an object
- there's no coin being used as a screwdriver (amazing!!!)
- there's no alternative minigame requiring you play through the game a second time to get all the achievements
- there isn't a huge list of alternative hidden objects that you have to find to accomplish secondary objectives (sadly, there ARE morphing items that you have to find, but they're very obvious, and there's only a few of them)
- nobody is kidnapped or held hostage

Most astonishing of all, I don't think there are any crows in this game. Is this a first for Artifex Mundi???!?

What this means is that you have a fairly run-of-the-mill hidden object game that feels just slightly better than others, because of a bunch of little quality of life improvements. Instead of a buddy that helps you fetch items you can't reach (as in so many previous games), in Mythic Wonders, you get a magical device that allows you to alter your environment to reveal objects you couldn't access otherwise. Mechanically, it's almost the same, but narratively, I like it a lot better.

Review: You play as Emma, a young woman in 1930s Europe who has been helping her uncle with constructing a contraption. She's gone home, but as the game begins, she is returning to rejoin her uncle in the laboratory. Upon arrival, she finds that her uncle has completed the construction of the portal and has gone through it. A guardian spirit appears to waylay her throughout her journey to be reunited with her family member. This journey takes her to different elemental realms where she must both:
- reassemble devices to power up the portals in each of these worlds so she can leave
- find and assimilate the elemental essence of that realm into a device called "the Philosopher's Stone"

As the story continues, it becomes clear that her uncle is a bad guy who desires the ability of the Philosopher's Stone to control the elements for his own selfish purposes. But it requires someone "pure of heart" to assemble it, so that's where Emma comes in. The spirit guardian (as we discover in the Bonus Chapter prologue to the main game) was actually created by their ancestors to prevent the Philosopher's Stone from ever being reassembled. In the end, Emma completes the Philosopher's Stone, the guardian banishes her uncle, and she relinquishes the artifact to the guardian once more.

Recommendation: It's a fun shmup and well worth your time.

Critique: You know how there are sometimes reactionary groups who try to make video games where there is no violence? Well, this may seem like one of these at first, but the key difference is that this game is FUN. There is still violence - the others in the game are trying to hurt you - but you are shooting healing rather than bullets. As you progress, the world is improved in many charming ways.

Recommendation: A good remake of the original Karateka game, with satisfying timing-based action (and yes, you still get to punch the hawk!). There is also a good deal of replay variety, as you get to choose between several different characters.