Some of the puzzles were really clever, but others were, as stated above, unintuitive. This was a remaster, yet there were still grammar mistakes. The graphics were so dark as to make playing A Rite from the Stars: Remaster Edition difficult. The only thing that the new one has better over the old appears to just be the price, which is a couple of bucks cheaper. I didn’t get very far in A Rite from the Stars: Remaster Edition, because it was almost unbearable to play. I think this is a game that could have been left in 2018.
Overall, Home Domes just wasn’t very fun, wasn’t intuitive, and it feels like it needs a UI overhaul. I think there are some interesting ideas there, but none of them were done particularly well. I don’t think I can recommend Home Domes, even to someone who loves the sim genre.
Even for a single dollar, I don’t think 100 Hidden Cats: Pirates is worth it. It’s just kind of boring; if you do have some little ones at home that like pirates and cats, they might be horrified by the fact that every single cat is obviously in danger. I can’t really recommend this to anyone.
Supermarket Duck Dash feels like it’s supposed to be hectic and fast-paced, but you can’t move at any kind of speed without knocking everything else back out of your cart. There is also a whole bunch of stuff you can’t reach up on really high shelves. I think the best I did was a couple of small items that barely stayed in my cart. Overall, it was not a well-made game, and it was not fun. It’s a real shame; this could be an amazingly fun, silly title, but it fell short of the mark it was obviously aiming for.
Overall, Bubble Dogs was kind of fun. It’s a simple game that feels familiar to play. As much as I love Suika-likes, I couldn’t love Bubble Dogs, which is so incredibly sad. Because a puppy-themed Suika game should have been right up my alley. I would prefer a slightly more expensive game with a lot more thought put into it.
Sippy Disco: Light Up the Dance Floor is a colorful, cute puzzle game with some good ideas. The puzzles started easy, but got really hard very quickly. But there is just so much incomplete about Sippy that it feels like a prototype. I like the basic structure, and I like the puzzles, but I’m afraid this game is not worth picking up.
I was so disappointed in Small Town Detective. I wanted to love it, but it was so hard to get into and figure out. This game was a massive disappointment for me.
Step By Step Hero has a lot of heart in it. You can tell it’s a pet project that someone poured a lot of thought into. But like many loved projects, this one suffers from what feels like a lack of play testing. There is so much going for this game, and it could be really fun if it weren’t for the step counter. It is incredibly difficult to make a walking simulator, and this one just missed the mark. With all that being said, I am looking forward to PixelSlop’s next title. I’d be interested to see what this developer has learned from making Step By Step Hero and what changes they plan to make in their next title.
I don’t like this game. Under The Moon is in need of some honest playtesters that are looking to improve the game’s appeal. I think it could be amazing with some simple editing: Edit the riddles for grammar. Put a little more effort into the riddles that are just descriptions of objects. Make the roads much, much shorter. Worry less about ray tracing and worry more about making what is there interact well with the world.
I get where the developers of Model City were going with this game. It has a lot of potentials to be fun, but a lot of changes will have to happen first, in my opinion. Needless to say that I was super disappointed with this game. I really hope the developers rethink Model City and rerelease it; I know that with its pretty graphics and interesting puzzle setup they could do a lot more. I know I could have figured out the math behind this puzzle game had I spent a lot more time with it, but I really, really didn’t want to. There was nothing to pull me in and keep me spending time with Model City.
I can see the value in this as an educational tool, but it’s not entertaining to play. Not to mention that it’s easy to tank your own business. It’s incredibly detailed, but the details are laid out in a way that is just boring. For $30 USD, I wouldn’t recommend this game to almost anyone.
Overall, The Hundred Year Kingdom was just kind of boring to me. I liked the look and the idea, but it didn’t feel like any of the decisions I was making actually mattered. There wasn’t a whole lot to do except look at the cute anime girls. I didn’t really get the whole idea of the game. Perhaps I didn’t play enough of the game to get to the fun part, but in my humble opinion, games should lead with the fun part.
Sadly, the story of Entwined: The Perfect Murder feels rushed and the characters are bland. And although there are some unique puzzles, they are rehashed too often. This game is only worth picking up if you really, really love HOG games. Otherwise, there are better point-and-click adventure games out there.
I had a very hard time getting anywhere near the end of this game. It was so slow; it would have been better off as a real visual novel instead of making the player do long, boring hours of forced labour. Delivering real mail would be a lot more interesting. The delivery mini-game padding in this game makes it less likely that visual novel fans will love this game, and the repetitive nature of Lake will ensure that adventure game lovers will also not really dig this title. I’m not entirely sure who the target audience for this game is, but I feel like it misses the mark completely.
Harold Rabbit—Finder of Lost Things feels like an unfinished game. With a little bit of work, it could be a lot of fun and very cute, but as it stands, I wouldn’t pick this game up. Once it has been updated with some bug fixes and a hint system, this will be an absolute delight to play, but I can’t give it a positive score as is. I hope to be able to change this rating in the future.
Caduceus Quest is pretty, has a neat concept, and would make a great informational game. However, it is pretty unplayable as it currently stands. I still have yet to figure out how to get by the talking to the doctor quest because it just doesn’t seem to work. Overall, this could be such a cool game that I hope they fix it. But as it stands right now, it’s not worth taking a look at.
My time with Desktop Cat Cafe was short-lived and wasn’t great. I think the game has a lot of good bones, and it can be a great game at some point, but it needs a lot of love. At this moment, Desktop Cat Cafe is not worth $10 USD. I look forward to seeing it when it feels more complete.
There are a whole lot of things I do not like about Purrgonia, but I also feel like it could be made fun. If there were fewer things attacking me, I could cut down trees, if I could send villagers out to collect things, if I could decorate my town how I wanted, if I could interact with more things in the world, I think I would like it a lot. It feels very unfinished. Overall, I don’t have many positive feelings about my time with Purrgonia, but I think it could be something really neat one day with some work.
I don’t like games that use AI; I don’t think that there are many use cases for AI in a space where you are charging people for the final product. Coupled with the fact that I was a little bored by Jixo overall, I think that I just don’t like it. It’s not original in any way, and the artwork, which is the main point of the game, is both AI and kind of lacklustre. Not ugly per se, but it that kind of fuzzy weirdness that comes with AI generation. Jixo: The Season of Joy Collector’s Edition has many different puzzles, but I wasn’t super impressed by the combination of art I don’t like, a $10 price tag, and generic games inside. If you don’t mind the AI art, you might find Jixo a lot more fun than I did, however, which is why I rated this title with an “I’m not sure.”
I couldn’t get very far in Lunara: Planet IX. I have several hours in the game, and I haven’t really gotten anywhere. I was pretty disappointed with everything but the way it looks. It was so hard to get anywhere or do anything, and I couldn’t seem to get very far.