Recent reviews by Nysari

This is truly one of the most beautiful games I've played in a long time. Even days after having completed it, I'm still going back to flip through the art book, listen to the soundtrack, and watch the music video.

Every aspect of this game feels like it was so lovingly crafted. The soundtrack with its unique songs for each level and character that slowly unfold themselves over the course of the level, the fact that every single asset was designed to drip southern gothic and handmade charm, that every level is an ode to a different part of the American south, the action-platformer gameplay that feels like a love letter to the PS2 era... and of course the southern folklore. Each creature is rooted in real folklore and has all the makings of the larger than life kinds of tales that make the world feel magical.

It's true that the gameplay itself isn't anything new, but it's not trying to be. Honestly, the gameplay feeling familiar to me allowed me to appreciate the incredible environments and characters Hazel experiences, since I wasn't fighting to learn new mechanics while I played. Of course, I still fell in a couple holes just because I was so busy looking around at the scenery.

And while the gameplay gave me Uncharted vibes, the story was reminiscent of another game I adored -- Spiritfarer. The central theme is about releasing trauma, while simultaneously respecting that our past traumas have forever shaped who we are. I'm not too proud to admit that this game made me ugly sob while climbing a tree.

I also appreciate the effort that went into making this game accessible. My ADHD brain appreciates the constant little keybind reminders, or hints on how to dodge certain attacks in the moment. Different visual elements can be toggled to show you the path ahead or point out something off-screen. There are subtitles and full closed captioning, with the ability to change the text size and background color. There are five different difficulty modes to increase or decrease the challenge level from the default "balanced" setting. I didn't look into keybindings, but I assume it's possible to map accessible controllers. In general, if you have any concerns about the game being either too hard to too easy, there are modes for you. I'm pretty mid at games in general and I found "balanced" to be challenging, but not overly frustrating given the wealth of checkpoints.

And if after all this, your only reason for not giving this game a shot is that you feel you won't be able to relate to a young black girl as a main character, I'd encourage you to challenge yourself on that. Hazel's story is a human one -- it's a story for anyone with empathy for others, anyone who has witnessed suffering and wished they could do something about it.

I hope this game finds more of the positive attention it deserves.

I would say this is a perfectly fine game. It's not one of those that will stick with me forever with memories of how ingenious it is, but I wanted to clarify some things I saw on other reviews.

You absolutely can die. Maybe not to every creature in every circumstance, but it can happen. It's a soft death, which is pretty well befitting of a puzzle game. It would be tedious to need to go back and get whatever key/code you just obtained every time the monsters got you. I suppose other people have quicker reaction times than I do, and maybe were quicker to spot the spider creatures lurking around corners that I happened to walk straight into, or never got backed into a corner mid-chase due to an utter lack of navigational skills under pressure. As a result maybe they never died, but I died around 3 times. So I think the criticism that you can't die and therefore the game isn't scary isn't totally valid.

I agree that chase scenes could be more interesting -- potentially be a bit longer and more dynamic like some chase scenes you find in games that have jump and duck mechanics to slide over tables and crawl through holes and knock over objects to get away. I get that's hard to do in the claustrophobic sort of environment you'd expect on a ship, but I imagine there's something that could be figured out there.

And I also agree that the whistle mechanic feels like it doesn't quite hit, especially since the creatures who respond to it aren't lethal when they attack and aren't really a huge issue in general. I honestly found myself spamming it as a weirdly comforting way to kill the silence. The audio never felt like it was quite 360, but it would have been really cool to whistle from time to time and hear a response right behind me for a little hair-raising effect. Like maybe a reeeaaaalllly low chance to trigger a creature spawn from whistling so much to get one good little scare.

Most of the spook factor is derived from the ambiance and the jump scares, both of which are done very well in my opinion. I wouldn't say any jump scare was especially unpredictable, but I also consume a lot of horror content so there was always some part of me that thought "well, this is the perfect time for one". That said, I don't really see that as a bad thing, as those moments still made me jump. Sometimes the dread of knowing it's coming can enhance the atmosphere, and I can say I felt quite uncomfortable nearly all the way through.

I do agree with another reviewer that that one section toward the end (the medical wing) felt a little more tedious than interesting, especially since that particular area had more to do with key-fetching and spooks than any interesting puzzles. I get thematically why it exists, I just think maybe some other approach to achieve that "I'm on the last ste-- oh nooooo" sort of energy might have fared a bit better.

The ending also felt mildly anticlimactic. I might have liked one last big chase or perhaps if right in the epilogue you show signs of having contracted the illness or alternatively alternate endings where you're infected if you ran into any of the "statues" but not infected if you managed to dodge them all. But it's possible I missed elements of the lore that would make that not make sense.

Anyway, I know I may be coming off as overly critical, and it's only because I firmly believe this game is only a few little tweaks away from going from a good game to a great game. It was a perfectly fun for the price and made for an enjoyable few hours! I hope to see more from this dev in the future, as they clearly have a solid grasp of the horror genre. A few more interesting multi-part puzzles (like the table setting puzzle), maybe a hints system (I forgot about the numbers I saw on the wall through the cameras and had to find a walk-through to see what I was missing) and some tweaks to the creatures and this would easily have been an absolutely amazing game I'd recommend to everyone.

NovaSoft has yet again captured the nostalgic vibes of old-school point-and-click puzzle adventures and merged them seamlessly with modern quality-of-life enhancements. I'm so excited to see them take everything they learned making Meridian 157 and apply it to a brand new mystery.

This is a puzzle game first and foremost, not a story game which happens to have puzzles. So there's a certain level of suspension of disbelief required. Puzzles are worked into the progression in a way I personally like to think of as "delightfully gratuitous", but some could consider it excessive and annoying. Sure, it doesn't make logical sense that the only key to the truck would be in a locked chest in the basement, and that the lock would be set to something very specific about the correct solution for the nearby case board (which is for some reason in its incorrect state when you arrive). If that's the kind of thing that annoys you, then would probably dislike both this series AND Meridian 157.

But if you're like me and you're into puzzling just for puzzling's sake and you don't care if the fire extinguisher you need is in a slide-puzzle locked cabinet (looking at you, Meridian 157), then this could be the series for you! And luckily this first chapter is free, so it only costs a bit of time and disk space to figure that out.

It's fine. Mostly upvoting it to counteract how negatively it's been reviewed so far.

Like any stuff pack, it's one of the cheaper types of DLCs to add some extra play items, build items, and CAS items. This is actually the sort of DLC I'm personally okay with, as the game is definitely complete without it -- it just adds some fun extra stuff if you happen to pick this up on sale or as part of a bundle.

I mostly picked this up because of the ice cream maker, specifically because the flavor "Taste of Diet" can be eaten by children and toddlers and will make them lose weight. I always felt a bit unfairly punished for failing to intervene when my sims (or the butler/nanny) feed my toddlers quick food, so it's nice to have a less-cheaty-than-cheating reset. It also works well to counteract the weight they'll gain if they eat a lot of ice cream. The kitchen stuff and CAS items are a fun added bonus to ease the sting of paying 7 bucks to assuage the body image issues I project onto my child sims.

I will say that I dislike that sims will put the finished ice cream in their inventory instead of automatically serving it (like any other food). I suppose it stops them from just deciding to make and eat ice cream whenever they want, but that's really my only gripe.

I really like where the devs are headed with this, and I feel confident that they're willing to steward this game to where it needs to be. So it's a thumbs up from me! It just released, so of course it needs some polish and finesse. Bugs, crashes, and less-than-ideal AI abound. But all that said, I played this for hours with my family and we had a blast! If you're a bit more budget-conscious and don't want to spend money on something that might crash, I would give it some time to stabilize. As of this writing, the game had its first hotfix following the early access release.

We essentially played it as pure co-op as we didn't care much about the secret objectives. I like the secret objectives as a concept, but I think the "traitor" ones could be a bit spicier. In a group of four, our secret objectives didn't typically conflict so we were willing to help each other out. That said, having the option to play cooperatively and just have some goofs and only be punished with less exp/money is nice. Anyone who does want to get really sweaty about it could join a public game or play with like-minded friends. I also love that solo play is an option at launch for us introverted folk who would never dream of entering a public lobby.

The four of us are a pretty diverse group in terms of how intensely we game, and we all had fun in our own ways. Our two more serious gamers (neither of which was me) managed to survive once out of the five times we played. I'm sure they were only held back by the other two of us frequently dying halfway through because we weren't taking it super seriously. There's definitely a bit of a learning curve for those of us who are less hardcore, as I often found myself being (what I thought was) plenty sneaky in a tight space, just to have ol' fluffybutt come stomping around a corner. Though I do appreciate that if she just happens to randomly run at you and hasn't targeted you, she simply throws you aside. This fixes an issue we had with the early Labyrinthine levels that always felt unfair -- doing the right thing at the right time, and dying because of random pathing.

And not sure if this is already on the roadmap, but localized audio (radios at a distance), and having speech also attract creatures would be nice. We're at a phase where we don't really need the game to get any harder, but I'd love to see it a bit scarier.

All in all, we're very excited to see how this continues to evolve!

This game has pleasantly surprised me on so many fronts.

If you're like me, you might have initially seen the demo as played by a few popular let's-players. I tried the demo for myself a few years ago, but had regrettably forgotten to follow its development process. I was so excited to see it fully released, as I was so charmed by the initial concept. As I started playing, I quickly realized how far above and beyond the demo this game has become.

This is along review so I added some headers to help with finding any potentially relevant info.

The first noticeable change is of course the art style -- it's so much more detailed and sophisticated without losing the original charm and direction. In just a few flat vector drawings, the artists so adeptly communicate mood and emotion.

The next big change is the sheer variety of ways voice is implemented. You might have played the demo and thought a full game in the same concept might be a bit much, but there is such incredible variety that I found myself moving on to a whole new style of puzzle just as I was beginning to tire of the current set. The different levels take you through different specializations, each adding a new layer of challenge that always felt both interesting and manageable. And where voice is not in use (always a welcome break), the mechanics still feel quite novel and fun.

I'd also like to note that this is the only game where I could sneeze and find myself accidentally solving a puzzle, which did happen to me once. So... 10/10 on that front alone.

I also wasn't expecting to get so wrapped up in the story, which is pretty simple at face value... but it's also a metaphor for the fears we often face in using our voice -- fears not just originating from public pressure, but from ourselves as well. I might be a bit on the sensitive side, but I definitely got a little teary-eyed. It's a surprisingly relatable little story, and ends on such a heartwarming note!

I saw some negative reviews around difficulty, so I wanted to offer my perspective.

Coming from a place of someone who only sings at a hobby level (karaoke and in the shower, basically) and who can't read music, I found this to still be a good technical level for me. I see some of the negative reviews regarding vocal range are early access, so I'd like to note that your vocal range can now be changed at any time in the settings. I personally didn't find the band of min/max pitch to be wide enough to be too challenging. In my chosen range I could have easily gone quite a bit higher or lower, and I don't exactly have an operatic vocal range. That said, someone who never sings might still struggle.

For anyone concerned with ability to sustain notes on a single breath, there are a few areas which can potentially be challenging. But all extended notes are pretty forgiving if you want to take a quick breath in the middle. I don't really recall singing many notes for more than 5 seconds, and any notes that went longer had some mechanism in place to where you wouldn't lose much progress taking a quick breath, or where they could be accomplished in a series of quicker, shorter notes.

And while the ability to find notes can be challenging, there is always some visual indicator of your current pitch versus the target pitch in 99% of puzzles. There are a few cases of the indicator being obstructed in some way, but it's typically only during repeat sections and doesn't happen too often. I don't think I got any of the high accuracy achievements, but I could always fumble my way through. For the most part, the puzzles accept "good enough" which for me felt far from perfect. And in the end, the harshest punishment beyond repeat attempts is just hearing your disjointed harmonies played back to yourself until you move along to the next puzzle.

Also in the only section where there's a technical "death", the checkpoints are after every single obstacle so you never have to repeat an obstacle you fully passed. So even the most potentially frustrating level is honestly not that bad.

I enjoyed this game so much, and I definitely recommend it to fans of both the rhythm/musical genre and puzzle platformers. Have a beverage handy and maybe plan to play in a few separate sessions (I played in two), because it can be a vocal workout!

I bought this at 20% off, but I still think it's well worth the full price. It took me 5 hours to play through, and I was so invested, so transported, and so so entertained for every minute of game play. I can't even say it left me wanting more... I think it was the exact right length and the exact right level of difficulty for a casual experience. It's deserving of every current and future award it receives!

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk!

I want to start first with what this game is not, because I feel like attitude is everything in approaching games like this.

It is not:

• A farming simulator
  
• A cozy game
  
• An adventure game
  
• A "satisfying" game (as in the satisfying game genre)
  
• Fast paced and exciting

Basically, it's very much not Stardew Valley. But that's okay because... you could just play Stardew Valley for that type of experience.

You should come to Stillness of the Wind for the experience and the story. You will not walk away from this game feeling a sense of accomplishment. You probably won't even feel happy. In fact, if you play this game and you feel a sense of dread and helplessness, I'd say you're doing it right. And that's okay, because not everything we experience should exist to make us happy. Games like this offer a safe way to experience some pretty dark and depressing themes. This game taps into very real fears that we'll spend our last days lonely, helpless, and haunted by loss.

Yes, there is a farming mechanic... but the best way I've seen it put is that the farming shouldn't be thought of as much more than a way to pass the time. To get the most out of this game, you should really try to put yourself in Talma's shoes. Imagine what each letter means to her -- how it might affect her. Her husband is gone... her siblings and her only daughter have left for the city... her granddaughter is going to a whole other planet. She is alone with no one but her goats and the occasional visit from the mailman. She is old and she is slow. She can't do everything in one day.

When the news from her family turns disturbing, there is nothing she can do about it. She can't get to them, or stop the things that are happening to them. She can only continue to survive as the world around her falls apart. She farms because it's all she knows -- it's her only way to get by. In fact there was a point for me at which the farming felt meaningless... just something done out of habit to fill space. I believe that was an intentional choice.

I feel like anyone who has lived through a tragedy they were helpless to prevent -- such as the illness and eventual loss of a loved one -- can relate to the feeling that life trudges onward in utter ignorance of your pain and despair... the feeling of going through your daily tasks just because there's nothing else for you to do but survive. It's something I struggle to put into words, but I feel like this game captures it so well.

Yes, to the credit of some of the negative reviews... you do really have to be present and put the work in to empathize with the characters. There's not much in the way of voice acting (just sighs, laughs, etc.) or slap-you-in-the-face plot twist sort of moments. I wouldn't hazard to call this an exciting game. It's definitely a slow-paced, meditative sort of experience. You really have to take time to read and reflect on what's happening. It's not for everybody, and that's totally fine. Heck... you might even be the kind of person who would like this, but it's the wrong time in your life to play it. That's fine too.

Anyway, I picked this up on sale as part of the Life and Loss Bundle -- so for me the little journey this took me on was more than worth the $3.24 I spent on it. Whether it's worth the full price really depends on how much you love to experience really diverse little stories with dark tones, and if a 3 hour play time feels sufficient to you. But I'm really glad I gave it a shot, and I think a lot about the experience will stick with me for awhile.

DK has such an awesome vision for this game! He knows exactly the kind of horror experience he's wanting to build, and is more than okay with cutting extra fluff to get there. That's why you won't see exorcisms, random extra objectives unrelated to the ghost, or superfluous jump-scares added to this game. Good horror is built on those tense moments where nothing is happening and you're not sure whether or not you're safe, and that's something this game does extremely well.

The game offers just enough information to be survivable by first-time players, but holds enough secrets for return players to discover over time. While the map selection isn't enormous (though it's still growing!), enough about the ghost behavior is random to keep things exciting for many replays. Definitely cherish being a first-time player, because there's nothing quite as spooky as those first few contracts played with weak flashlights in unfamiliar buildings not knowing anything about how the ghost is going to act!

The last few updates have proven that CJ and Lavender are already such an amazing added force in getting this game to the finish line in the next few years. I'm so excited for the Horror 2.0 changes still to come! Happy one year anniversary to this amazing game!

I actually jumped into this game without reading any reviews (which is rare for me at this price point). Now that I've finished the game and stopped to read a few, I thought I'd offer my two cents.

I do agree with the sentiment that this might be a wait-for-the-sale type of game for many people, as the asking price versus hours of gameplay is a bit askew. I do think the price tag is to fund the level of production that went into this game as the voice acting is impeccable and much of the experience felt very cinematic to me.

But it's also not without its share of bugs -- I ended up restarting the game multiple times after reaching a point where the wife would follow my character around and sit anywhere but the couch (on the toilet, halfway out the front door, middle of the living room, and -- at one point -- somewhere clipped entirely out of the scene). She could also see me doing something she was not meant to notice and was reacting even though I was behind a closed door -- a far cry from my super-secret phone calls made in plain sight while simply standing in the closet. At another point I got stuck shuffling in a circle near the bedroom door while the wife was stuck on the couch, and the killer eventually joined the party by idling in the middle of the apartment. We stayed that way until the clock ran out. Luckily your overall storyline progress is saved, so this was more of a mild nuisance than anything. And I'm sure a patch will be soon underway to clean all of this up.

Contrary to what I saw in some other reviews though, I actually enjoyed the story and gameplay all the way through. Regarding the gameplay, I should offer one little asterisk -- I'm a software engineer by trade and love coding. I say this because anyone who has programmed before at any length can relate to the feeling of hypothesizing, updating, compiling, and testing code until you get that one epiphany that just... works. And that feeling of finally making progress is just so immensely gratifying that it makes the stress of getting there feel worth it. And then you do it all over again. That's what this gameplay felt like for me. Yes, at times I would be frustrated and wonder what the hell else I could possibly try. Yes, there were times when I was just flushing every possible object down the toilet because... hey, maybe I'll trigger something (which did pay off for one particular object in some somewhat amusing dialogue at one point so... no regrets). But I never felt utterly clueless. I felt that the game did a good enough job of leaving me just enough breadcrumbs to tell me what I needed to be looking for, without insulting my intelligence on the how to find it. The only thing I found frustrating were the few times I had to run the exact same scene just to build on the information from last time (particularly the one toward the end, which I had to run three times -- I imagine this is a big contributor to negative sentiment surrounding the "gameplay at the end"). But while it's true you can only skip dialogue line-by-line, you can skip time to the next event in several different ways. And starting the scene over is pretty simple as well, so there's no need to commit to one you know won't work. I guess it never felt like a big enough time sink to bother me since every loop happens within 10 real-time minutes, but I can see how this could be incredibly bothersome to some people.

As for the story, I was perfectly fine with it. I enjoyed the twist, even though it's not hard to suspect it quite early on. I'll admit it's likely not anything particularly revolutionary, but it did more or less answer all of my questions -- including the broader "why the heck is this even happening?" question. I'm not sure I understand the ire some people have around it, unless it's just the paradox of it all. And to that I'd say suspension of disbelief is required, because too much prodding definitely pokes holes in the plot. But I was willing to throw away any grounding in reality at the introduction of the time loop concept, and I'm totally willing to accept "because magic, that's why" as an answer to anything that doesn't make sense. So if you're able to sit back and enjoy it for what it is and not be that guy who walks away from any movie that features time travel all flustered over the rules that were broken, it's a pretty fun ride. If you are that guy and you like your universes rigidly defined and logically sound, you probably won't like the story.

(Update: I've since learned that a lot of the issues people have with the story is around the nature of the twist. As someone who regularly binges horror content and also enjoyed all but the last 10% of Game of Thrones... it's pretty tame in my opinion. Just don't go into this thinking it's all sunshine and butterflies -- ♥♥♥♥ gets dark.)

TLDR;
I recommend if you're like me and you:

• Love puzzle games that leave very few hints and reward iterative testing (and at times sheer brute force).
  
• Don't feel like a ~10 minutes or less time commitment per attempt is too long, even if you have to repeat a lot of stuff for multiple attempts in a row.
  
• Are willing to take the story at face value, or are at least willing to accept there's mystical forces at play and leave it at that.
  
• Never get tired of listening to Willem Dafoe.

It might not be for you if you:

• Like your gratification in the instant variety.
  
• Hate having to repeat stuff.
  
• Get frustrated easily.
  
• Don't consider puzzles to be particularly fun, or at least hate having to brute force through them at times.
  
• Prefer stories that follow logic and rules and feel like "a wizard did it" is a huge cop out.
  
• Expect zero bugs in a fully released game.

All of which is totally fair and I'd still say to try it, but maybe catch it on sale and temper your expectations.