Recent reviews by Auster

Story is on the slower and heavier side, dealing with the main character's loss.

Exploration and combat is interesting, reflecting the main character though her dreams and her struggle, though it can grow a bit repetitive at times, which is thankfully mitigated by the next point.

Out of exploration, gameplay is a social simulator on the basic side, but enrich on plot, and while the game is a roguelite, what you unlock outside of exploration does feel like a substantial upgrade during gameplay.

Liked it very much!

On a final note, Voltaic Ray ftw

Pretty good. Hard, but good.

To me, it hits the nail on the head in its cartoon style, both in humor and art design.

On difficulty, though somewhat unorthodox, the puzzles' solutions didn't feel like "moon-logic". The biggest influence to the difficulty would probably be that during most of the game, the player needs to solve 3 scenarios in parallel, and which may influence one another, which had me checking walkthroughs a few times to know what I was missing or where I should go, which I wasn't too amused with "<.< (but nothing damaging on my overall impression on the game).

On the story, it is very basic, but not bad. And though it is a sequel to Maniac Mansion, as someone whose first contact was to get the achievements for DotT but nothing further, where the game introduces elements from the previous one, the explanations feel good for the player to not be lost at random name drops and the sort.

Also liked that it includes as an easter egg the full Maniac Mansion (apparently the DOS version?). If I don't get the stand-alone release, may play DotT further to play through Maniac Mansion.

Very recommended!

The game is a grindfest, and it's so hectic you'll likely be replaying each stage several times to try to get the minimum rating required for the sum condition to go to the next chapter.

Positives: at least now people don't need to waste money with the censored version.

SteamWorld Heist is a game about a crew of space-faring androids dealing with issues as they come.

Story-wise, it felt rather superficial, and was probably the weakest part of the game for me.

Design and art-wise, the game looks good, but can end up being repetitive, as you will be going through a lot of missions, as they have an overall similar design and style as the other missions for their respective sectors. Characters, on the other hand, are rich in details and so don't suffer from that same repetitiveness.

Gameplay loop, specially when it comes to combats, was probably the best part of the game. The combat goes in the line of a turn-based tactical RPG and that, unlike games like Final Fantasy Tactics where an attack's success depends on, more often than not, getting pretty close and hoping RNGesus is on your side, instead you have a relatively non-linear exploration (in contrast with the linearity of the rest of the game), as well as being more skill/timing-oriented, having to aim while being pretty aware of both your surroundings (more than once I've been shot by a turret in a corner that I forgot) and your character's movement patterns (requiring more patience for aiming).

Besides, still regarding gameplay, much like with design, each character feels unique also through their specific skills and quirks. Some can move less and some can move more. One seemed to have a counterattack for melee attacks. One has an AoE healing. One can literally become invincible once per mission. Some have steadier aims than others. Basically, plenty of possibilities to test with.

And the game says in the beginning that a controller is recommended, but since some shots need to be very precise, and even more so when hunting for new hats that come from enemies (the hat needs to be shot off the enemy's head without killing the enemy to get it), I'd recommend a mouse instead.

My impressions overall were pretty positive, maybe because the most positive part, the gameplay loop, was also the biggest part of the game overall. Still, it is a game I recommend.

As it is now, it is kinda same-y. Still, there is fun to be had, it gets seemingly frequents updates, and it has full modding support, so it has potential.

As some positive points, the game is pretty intuitive, sandboxing is good and, from what I tested, modding is pretty powerful.

As some negatives, dialogues can feel rather stiff, combat is a tad clunky, food can be rather sparse if you don't know what you're doing or if you're unlucky.

As it gets futher updated, I may edit this review, but so far, if I had to give a score, it'd be somewhere around 6~7 out of 10.

In the game, the protagonist is tasked with stopping his school from being destroyed 3 days after he joins the school and is tasked with the mission. For that, players need to loop around this 3-days period, trying save the school and solving the mystery behind it.

Story-wise, the game doesn't take itself very seriously, even in otherwise potentially more serious moments, being more focused on a random, somewhat chaotic type of humor. Story depth is a tad shallow, so the humor is potentially the biggest selling point regarding the story. And having played the game in English, some elements in the game also make me think the original language of the script is not English. But other than some sporadic lines that sounded a bit odd and some untranslated Cyrillic texts in the background, the game was perfectly understandable.

Gameplay is mostly of the puzzle type, where you run back and forth trying to put together clues to solve the mystery and tasks from sidequests. Some moments are more agility/speed-oriented, and (light end-game spoilers) you also get to actual fights, where you even has an HP bar. Still, for the spoiler-marked part, unlike a certain other puzzle game that also suddenly changes its genre near the end, if it becomes too hard, you can toggle the "invincibility" option in the settings for an easy time.

Graphics and lighting are nice, being pretty detailed for pixel art and following well and organically the motifs of their respective areas and the overall game. Character designs felt a bit strange at first, but besides the aforementioned humor, I feel it's easy to get used to those designs, as well as them making it easy to tell one character apart from the others.

Overall, it was a pretty good game I don't shy away from recommending.

It's kinda alright.

Dialogues seem kinda strange, stiff.

Matches are fun but can get repetitive fast.

One of those games on Steam I wish we could give a neutral score, but in the lack of that, I guess I pend a bit to a thumbs up.

The game is a mix of racing games and rail shooter games, and it does a good job at mixing both. Difficulty increases with each track, and it doesn't seem like it has an ending, per se, only having more and more tracks to play, so it's perhaps better as a way to kill time.

Story is near nonexistent, with only FMVs of a presenter "Lance Boyle" presenting the "MegaRace" show. And those FMVs, although kinda awkward at first, have a silliness that grew on me, mainly thanks to the actor's interpretation of Lance Boyle.

Overall, I recommend the game.

The game is pretty simple, being only a series of stages that mix of memory match and bullet hell, and with stages and music being very minimalistic.

But it works out pretty well, in my opinion.

Two things to note, however:
1) Achievement hunters may want to stay away from the game, since achievements' been broken since late 2020. Maybe downloading an older update through Steam's official depot_downloader tool can help, but I haven't tried.
2) The game can be pretty stressful for people susceptible to sensory overload, as the stages happen in confined areas and you're under fire at all times while trying to match tiles. Stages 6-5 and the last one, 10-5, can be pretty BS about it.

But overall, I recommend, but keeping in mind the two observations above.