Beautiful Desolation raises a lot of questions but leaves the answers open for most of the time. It is an experience that makes you wonder about humanity and what the future will bring. It is fun only for those who are looking for deep-reaching experiences, that will stick with you long after you finished the game.
The game also served as a gateway to thinking and reading about the education process and its modern institutions. Academia features plenty of exaggerations and abstractions, required to make the gameplay palatable and the overall experience fun. But it also illuminates issues, like limited resources, that exist in the real world. It took Squeaky Wheel a long time to deliver this gem of a game and I'm already curious to see what element of reality they plan to turn into a management simulation in their next title.
There are times when the title seems to deliver more core ideas than it has to, possibly to add more challenge even if it does not need to. But most of the time the game from Serious Bros is both engaging and enchanting. Imagine Earth shines in both campaign and free play and I cannot wait to see how the team expands on its core mechanics.
For a first game, it is not bad. Some things can be improved, but you can lose yourself in the game world and you will have fun with it. Despite the flat jokes and repetitive secondary quests, Biomutant is a game worth a try.
Of Bird and Cage is not a good game and I can only think of a small subset of people who might enjoy it: fans of progressive rock with a love of soapy narrative drive titles and an ability to ignore presentation issues. Anyone else should avoid playing the game, even if it is relatively short at around two hours.
Review code provided by the publisher.
Review based on a copy of the game purchased by Softpedia.
Review code provided by the publisher.
After some time I understand what and how to do and finish a level with a decent result (the targets the game sets are for much better players). I only wished the development team offered more ways to cut down frustration to make more gamers enjoy World Splitter for longer periods.
Base One is too conservative in its take on the future, its approach to mechanics, and its story to create an experience that can keep gamers engaged with the campaign in the long term. The custom game mode offers ways to engage with all core mechanics in a variety of player-defined scenarios.
Having fixed most of the technical and visual bugs that plagued the initial release, Poker Club cannot overcome the issues that haunt all the poker simulators. The unpredictability of the human element brings tediousness and a slow pace, without being able to replicate the thrills of playing face to face with another human being.
Given that it is very hard to eliminate features from a released game I hope that Larkon has learned a valuable lesson and will deliver a better game using similar core ideas in the future. A new take on the strategic elements of Might & Magic with some innovations for the combat could reach a large number of players.
The game also has plenty of long-term goals. But once I learned more about the monsters and the enemies I found it hard to get excited, even when I got a new powerful creature or when a powerful hero dropped in. Goblinz Studio understands the two genres it is mixing but it should have added a pinch more innovation to make Legend of Keepers into a long-term fun experience.
The game leaves little room for error and it is frustrating that it does not allow you to retry a specific chapter, rather it forces you to restart the entire game. Even if you like solving puzzles, the level of difficulty will be off-putting because they are paired with clunky controls.
Every fan of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" or works influenced by it will find something to love in the tight experience that Clockwork Bird has designed. There is also plenty of space for them to expand both the story and the mechanics in meaningful ways in future titles set in the same universe.
Still, it is hard to forgive the length, the lack of the story, and the fact that after you played or, replayed it once more, there is nothing more to do here. The atmosphere is special, the puzzles are well thought out, and the environment is very detailed, but each player has to decide for themselves how 2-3 hours of fun should translate into a price tag.
Right now Disco Elysium The Final Cut is damn close to that vision. It is not often that I can forgive a messy launch, but the fixes that patched up things quite quickly and the experience itself outweighs any issues that are already in the past. If there was any game from the ones presented in a while that I wholeheartedly recommend, this is the one.
As it stands after a first completed expedition I had no desire to try another. The characters stay the same and the management element never adds new twists. The end screen for each playthrough shows quite a few possible conclusions to work towards but the world never feels interesting enough to try and get them all. Unless you truly love slow, moody stories and choice-focused titles avoid Ashwalkers unless updates deliver a tighter, faster version of the experience.
Overall Superliminal is a great puzzle experience, and you feel throughout it that the developers had fun putting it together. This is a dream therapy that actually works, being funny and creative at the same time.
There's a little bit too much earnestness in the writing at times, especially during the final third, but once one buys into the premise it is easy to get past it. Say No! More talks about the importance of choice and self-expression and curious players should ignore its thesis and say "Yes" to this narrative-driven experience.