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Great logic puzzle game I played on iOS. Clean, eye-pleasing design, and consistently interesting mechanics that unfold over time. My only complaint is that it leaned a bit on the easy side. Somewhere around half of the levels could be solved in a minute or less, and the only levels that seemed to present a decent challenge were either the few bonus levels, or those at the very end of the game. I wanted more of these levels toward the end, because the added mechanics really worked my brain while remaining doable. Still, it was enjoyable start to finish.
I always have low expectations for these type of clicker games but this idiotic web game managed to actually underwhelm even given my very low bar. Gameplay is completely brainless (like most games in this genre), but what really astonishes me is that there was no attention paid to the atmosphere, story, worldbuilding, game mechanics, or aesthetics of the game. There's a handful of inside jokes pointing to some self-awareness among the game developers but that's it.
I played this game briefly when it came out just to see what the fuss was about (and I checked it out again to finish up this review), so it says a lot about my annoyance with this game's fundamental existence that I'm still annoyed enough to write such a negative review. Not recommended.
I played this game briefly when it came out just to see what the fuss was about (and I checked it out again to finish up this review), so it says a lot about my annoyance with this game's fundamental existence that I'm still annoyed enough to write such a negative review. Not recommended.
«Waste of time»
«Boooring»
While there are a ton of free Flash games that just end up reminder the player why the format ended up dying out, Knightmare Tower stands out as an example of how addictive and fun the best games in this format were. The core "bouncing" and upgrade mechanics are very well-executed, and the difficulty of the game is well-calibrated to leave both inexperienced players and those who have enjoyed this game before wanting to come back for more rounds. No death feels unearned but there is still a significant amount of randomness in gameplay, the perfect combination that will lead you to obsessively hone your skills until you beat the game. (Trust me, this will happen sooner than you think given how hard the game is to put down!). Very fun, surprisingly addictive, strongly recommended.
«Just one more turn»
«Can’t stop playing»
I was torn between a "Meh" and "Recommended" rating but decided to round up because the aesthetics, storyline, and soundtrack were high-quality enough for a free game that I was willing to overlook some gameplay design issues.
The good: The music is very, very good for a free indie game (although they include just one or two fewer tracks than I would have appreciated given the length of the game). The storyline is sweet and generally well-executed, the worldbuilding (from the UI of the fake operating system to the interactions you have on BBS's) is first-rate, and even the somewhat absurd twist included toward the end of the game was reasonably well-executed.
The not-so-good: The gameplay is extremely linear and includes a lot of artificial components designed to make the game longer without adding any additional challenge or surprise. We are already throwing realism out the window in a lot of elements included in this game, so having monotonous tasks throw in the game multiple times doesn't accomplish anything narratively but annoy the player). The actual direction of gameplay is simultaneously extremely predictable and annoyingly precise, and I even managed to break the flow of the game in a way that required me to backtrack since I got information earlier than I was supposed to interact with it. Felt more like a movie than a game given how restricted your options were.
Overall, I enjoyed the experience of playing this game, and I was willing to overlook the issues I had with the gameplay given that the narrative elements were so well-executed. I'd recommend it but it's no great loss if you end up skipping this game.
The good: The music is very, very good for a free indie game (although they include just one or two fewer tracks than I would have appreciated given the length of the game). The storyline is sweet and generally well-executed, the worldbuilding (from the UI of the fake operating system to the interactions you have on BBS's) is first-rate, and even the somewhat absurd twist included toward the end of the game was reasonably well-executed.
The not-so-good: The gameplay is extremely linear and includes a lot of artificial components designed to make the game longer without adding any additional challenge or surprise. We are already throwing realism out the window in a lot of elements included in this game, so having monotonous tasks throw in the game multiple times doesn't accomplish anything narratively but annoy the player). The actual direction of gameplay is simultaneously extremely predictable and annoyingly precise, and I even managed to break the flow of the game in a way that required me to backtrack since I got information earlier than I was supposed to interact with it. Felt more like a movie than a game given how restricted your options were.
Overall, I enjoyed the experience of playing this game, and I was willing to overlook the issues I had with the gameplay given that the narrative elements were so well-executed. I'd recommend it but it's no great loss if you end up skipping this game.
«Sit back and relax»
«That ending!»
It's honestly kinda hard to give an honest full recommendation to the base of FF14, having just finished it and its patches finally I think I can safely say the experience definitely gets better near the end and more-so into the patches themselves especially when it comes to dungeons but the first like 15-20 hours of the game are honestly such a slog that it's hard for me to give an honest and full recommendation unless it's like you're playing and leveling with a group of friends or something to get through the much more boring introductory content of the game. I had like nothing to latch onto gameplay-wise, character-wise, even story-wise there really was just nothing for me to work with.
Then when the end of the game/patches came in the entire experience just really goes up in quality, likeable characters come in, characters who were alright before become way way more interesting. The plot itself even becomes more intriguing and kinda morally dubious even if there is still kind of a mustache twirling villain, it's a little more politically involved and I enjoy it.
I just hate that ARR wastes your time getting to that point honestly and if I wasn't playing through with friends and my partner and I wasn't be pushed through essentially to hang on I would've dropped this game honestly for the 5th time.
I'm excited now to get to Heavensward however so we'll see how things go.
Then when the end of the game/patches came in the entire experience just really goes up in quality, likeable characters come in, characters who were alright before become way way more interesting. The plot itself even becomes more intriguing and kinda morally dubious even if there is still kind of a mustache twirling villain, it's a little more politically involved and I enjoy it.
I just hate that ARR wastes your time getting to that point honestly and if I wasn't playing through with friends and my partner and I wasn't be pushed through essentially to hang on I would've dropped this game honestly for the 5th time.
I'm excited now to get to Heavensward however so we'll see how things go.
«Boooring»
«Oh God i managed it»
Really easy, to be honest, but also fun. Mixing the bright colors and watching little plants pop out is delightful, even if it didn't present much challenge. The added mechanics kept things interesting.
It's a good to great tower defense game but not a excellent one. The upgrades are fun, the graphics are cute, and there's tons of content here, plus the price (free) is very satisfying. There is something hypnotic even when the actual structure about what you have to accomplish is very clear simply because it still needs to be done quickly and precisely, and my full playthrough passed quickly and enjoyably.
That said, the core game play is pretty monotonous given that there's nothing that deviates from the typical tower defense game structure, plus at its core there's not much to do other than build towers in a handful of patterns that you will probably master about halfway through the games. Difficulty is more about quick precision and the order in which the optimal sets of towers are bought rather than any complex strategy, which makes the gameplay feel a little shallow.
I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't adverse to the tower game format and wants a quick and free flash game to pass the time.
That said, the core game play is pretty monotonous given that there's nothing that deviates from the typical tower defense game structure, plus at its core there's not much to do other than build towers in a handful of patterns that you will probably master about halfway through the games. Difficulty is more about quick precision and the order in which the optimal sets of towers are bought rather than any complex strategy, which makes the gameplay feel a little shallow.
I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't adverse to the tower game format and wants a quick and free flash game to pass the time.
«Just one more turn»
«Time-tested»
Concise Review:
This game is a combination of Doom and Borderlands with horrible graphics, crude cheesy writing and a surprisingly solid gameplay loop.
Amazing: nothing
Great: a ton of weapons and skills to use. A ton of upgrades and even more ways to mix and match the upgrades to create combinations that feel like they make a big difference in firefights. Constant noticeable progression.
Good: gunplay is solid and fast paced. Enemy variety is sufficient and the enemy models are interesting even with the awful graphics.
Fine: lots of jokes through out the game but only 1/10 ish land for me, has me laughing occasionally.
Bad: The environments are bland and repetitive. Glitches occasionally. Always stutters when passing check points, it’s annoying.
Awful: graphics are horrible even for a 2017 AA game. Character animations are ridiculously bad as well.
Journal Style Review:
Graphics are obviously awful. But the art design and the weird style is alright-ish. First impression is that the writing is ridiculous but it has made me laugh a couple times already. Even if only 1 in every 5 jokes gets a chuckle they are firing them off quickly enough.
Gameplay feels good. Fast paced. The early enemies have been unique. There are already a ton of weapons, upgrades and skills. It has more rpg aspects in that regard than I expected.
This game is better than it looks. Very fun enemies so far. Very fun guns. A lot of ways to mix and match upgrades for the guns. The combat is actually very solid.
I hope this game is made by Asian people... because if it was made by white people I’m pretty sure it’s very racist.
They have created a very fun customization system in this game. I’m enjoying playing with the different weapon combos. It’s pretty great, not ground breaking by any means (we’ve all seen elemental effects before) but well executed. I’m spending a long time clearing all my upgrades and then rethinking how to best set up my guns and gear. I’m really enjoying it.
The performance is usually alright but it does stutter when passing check points and I’ve had a few glitches. Nothing too bad though.
I was just finding the game a bit repetitive and then it threw a few new guns in rapid succession, added a new area, made crafting upgrades a thing, and added new challenges that can level up your guns, and added a new ability. I’m excited again.
This game has more to it than I thought. I thought I was about to be done but I’m still unlocking a ton of guns. It’s still been entertaining. The gun variety is very impressive.
The last two or so hours I lost a bit of interest, it became a little bit repetitive. Nonetheless this game surpassed my expectations. It had a solid stretch in the middle I was really enjoying it. Good mindless fun from the gameplay perspective while having some creative strategy when choosing guns and upgrades.
Final Score: B+
This game is a combination of Doom and Borderlands with horrible graphics, crude cheesy writing and a surprisingly solid gameplay loop.
Amazing: nothing
Great: a ton of weapons and skills to use. A ton of upgrades and even more ways to mix and match the upgrades to create combinations that feel like they make a big difference in firefights. Constant noticeable progression.
Good: gunplay is solid and fast paced. Enemy variety is sufficient and the enemy models are interesting even with the awful graphics.
Fine: lots of jokes through out the game but only 1/10 ish land for me, has me laughing occasionally.
Bad: The environments are bland and repetitive. Glitches occasionally. Always stutters when passing check points, it’s annoying.
Awful: graphics are horrible even for a 2017 AA game. Character animations are ridiculously bad as well.
Journal Style Review:
Graphics are obviously awful. But the art design and the weird style is alright-ish. First impression is that the writing is ridiculous but it has made me laugh a couple times already. Even if only 1 in every 5 jokes gets a chuckle they are firing them off quickly enough.
Gameplay feels good. Fast paced. The early enemies have been unique. There are already a ton of weapons, upgrades and skills. It has more rpg aspects in that regard than I expected.
This game is better than it looks. Very fun enemies so far. Very fun guns. A lot of ways to mix and match upgrades for the guns. The combat is actually very solid.
I hope this game is made by Asian people... because if it was made by white people I’m pretty sure it’s very racist.
They have created a very fun customization system in this game. I’m enjoying playing with the different weapon combos. It’s pretty great, not ground breaking by any means (we’ve all seen elemental effects before) but well executed. I’m spending a long time clearing all my upgrades and then rethinking how to best set up my guns and gear. I’m really enjoying it.
The performance is usually alright but it does stutter when passing check points and I’ve had a few glitches. Nothing too bad though.
I was just finding the game a bit repetitive and then it threw a few new guns in rapid succession, added a new area, made crafting upgrades a thing, and added new challenges that can level up your guns, and added a new ability. I’m excited again.
This game has more to it than I thought. I thought I was about to be done but I’m still unlocking a ton of guns. It’s still been entertaining. The gun variety is very impressive.
The last two or so hours I lost a bit of interest, it became a little bit repetitive. Nonetheless this game surpassed my expectations. It had a solid stretch in the middle I was really enjoying it. Good mindless fun from the gameplay perspective while having some creative strategy when choosing guns and upgrades.
Final Score: B+
So advance warning for this one - the entire premise of this game is to put you in the shoes of someone that gradually has a mental breakdown as he does his best to prevent random people from committing suicide.
Now, reading that sentence you may think 'wtf, how is that a game' and to be honest, when I first heard about WLIB, I thought the same thing. However, jumping in you quickly learn that this really is just as the developer (a solo dev at that) described it. In what seems to be the words of the developer:
"The process of playing Wait! Life is Beautiful! is similar to watching a film that stimulates a nerve, especially when the viewer finds themselves immersed in the protagonist's anxious state of mind. "
And judging by my experience, that is bang on. I'd go as far as to say that this is quite akin to an interactive visual novel, but you have a lot more control over what happens.
And judging by my experience, that is bang on. I'd go as far as to say that this is quite akin to an interactive visual novel, but you have a lot more control over what happens.
Jumping into the game, and without giving too many spoilers, you've got control of a character who starts out in a lifestyle that can only be described as a rut. His work is boring as-fudge and somehow, the combination of the visuals (never underestimate pixel art), the eerie ring of the phone, and the dour interactions that you have on the phone completely sells the life-sapping state of the main character. After a short time, your boss calls you and you're off to meet friends at a bar. Once again, the visuals, the soundtrack, and the text all combine together to quite literally throw me into the position of the main character - his life is empty and meaningless and somehow just because I focused on the game, that emotion started to leak into me. When a game can put emotions like that into you, then there is something special about it. After a while of talking to your friends in-game, you go home, turn on the tv and channel surf. Once again, it was the soundtrack that threw me off (or actually drew me in). It's not a flashy soundtrack, it's not a complex soundtrack, it's just sounds that you'd hear at home. Imagine if you can, an evening when it's raining outside, you've got fudge all to do, you're on your sofa alone, and you're surfing through countless tv channels and there is 'nothing' on. What you imagine as being the sounds of a day like that is what the game gives you.
From there, the day ends and you repeat the cycle again - essentially you go on until the main character snaps - quite literally flips the desk and has enough. Out of nowhere, he's got energy and goes on a journey (visually) in what seems to be akin to a psychedelic trip (just a note, don't play this game if you have suffer from epilepsy cause the flashing lights will harm you).
When everything calms down you end up at 'suicide bridge' and you meet the first person who wants to jump. Here the real game starts, and to me, this is where things got real. You talk to each person and you've always got a choice, be blunt in what you think, take the dark side and tell them to go, or try and cover their guilt with honey. During the chats, you meet people that are there for all sorts of reasons and the range of reasons is impressive, some are there as mental health sufferers who have been abandoned, some have PTSD, others are in a depressive/anxious state due to their own lives, and so on.
What impressed me the most is just how authentic the interactions were. I can't claim to have had deep chats with war veterans that suffer from PTSD, or people that are genuinely delusioned to the point of mental illness, but what I can say truthfully is that many people in my life have had crippling depression that lead to actual suicidal attempts. So when the game put me in a situation that mirrored my life experience I was curious to see what the developer wrote (after all a game that revolves around mental health and suicide needs to be REALLY careful). That entire encounter, it shook me, it wasn't a 'like for like' replica of what I went through with people in my life, but it was so close that the suppressed memories of it all came flooding back. Halfway through the encounter I said screw it and decided to answer as I did in RL (when I went through that) and low and behold it was the right answer for the game.
It was at this point that I had to stop, when I mentioned that the bridge scene was when the game became 'real' to me, I wasn't kidding, it literally threw me back in time mentally. I revisited the game later, progressed more, and found more of the same.
At this point, I've written a wall of text that may be jibberish to some but interesting to others.
However, I'll give you a tl;dr if you can't follow this:
1. This game is a hugely interactive poem - you follow a characters life and try to help those that want to commit suicide.
2. The game is pixel art, but the art style, the soundtracks, and the text combine in such a way that if you have an ounce of imagination you'll see yourself in the game with no problem.
3. To my knowledge, the interactions are authentic. The developer wrote that he went through rough periods in his life and it shows in the game. This isn't written by someone that thinks they know how mental health problems feel, this is written by someone that's lived with the problem for years and somehow made it through.
My recommendation, get the game for one of the most trippiest and deepest experiences you'll feel. Just a warning, if you've lived with mental health problems in your life - be careful because this is one of those rare times that I'll bring myself to seriously say that their trigger warning is HUGELY justified. Be sure to know what your mind is telling you if you play this game.
«Blew my mind»
A nice little pathfinding puzzle game. Not too challenging for most of the way, although the last few levels were pretty convoluted. The fast forward option proved useful. The kids enjoyed watching me play, particularly when I messed up and the firefly soared off into the great beyond.
Journal Style Review:
I started on Hitman 1. Prologue is alright. The small area does a good job of showing you how there will be many ways to complete a mission. The question is if I will think they are actually creative and enjoyable.
The Paris mission isn’t bad. So far, I’m still mostly just figuring out how to get from one story mission location to the next, but there are still some challenges in that. Picking disguises is fun although kind of ridiculous. There is a lot of guess and check on how to manipulate scenarios.
The number of challenges per mission is actually A little overwhelmingly. I beat the Paris mission 3 times. By the end I was a bit bored. Some of it felt creative but some of the problem solving aspects felt cheap. Right now, I’d say the game has a ton of different ways to solve the mission, but the ways don’t really feel natural. Like without the prompts I would never figure out the unique situations. And with the prompts I’m not really thinking how would I get this task complete? I’m just trying to get from point A to B.
I started another mission but I just don’t feel compelled to play it. I just don’t think I like the game much. It is very slow and has a lot of repetition. I don’t feel the creativity that it uses as it’s selling point yet.
Finished world of tomorrow. I was pretty sloppy about it. I don’t know if I will play this game anymore. It’s not really worth the time. I want to like this game. I want it to feel like MGSV with the creative stealth gameplay but it isn’t that type of game. I can see how some may like it. But I think it sucks. I think it’s boring. This is my final score for now. Probably won’t give this one another shot.
Final Score: B-
I started on Hitman 1. Prologue is alright. The small area does a good job of showing you how there will be many ways to complete a mission. The question is if I will think they are actually creative and enjoyable.
The Paris mission isn’t bad. So far, I’m still mostly just figuring out how to get from one story mission location to the next, but there are still some challenges in that. Picking disguises is fun although kind of ridiculous. There is a lot of guess and check on how to manipulate scenarios.
The number of challenges per mission is actually A little overwhelmingly. I beat the Paris mission 3 times. By the end I was a bit bored. Some of it felt creative but some of the problem solving aspects felt cheap. Right now, I’d say the game has a ton of different ways to solve the mission, but the ways don’t really feel natural. Like without the prompts I would never figure out the unique situations. And with the prompts I’m not really thinking how would I get this task complete? I’m just trying to get from point A to B.
I started another mission but I just don’t feel compelled to play it. I just don’t think I like the game much. It is very slow and has a lot of repetition. I don’t feel the creativity that it uses as it’s selling point yet.
Finished world of tomorrow. I was pretty sloppy about it. I don’t know if I will play this game anymore. It’s not really worth the time. I want to like this game. I want it to feel like MGSV with the creative stealth gameplay but it isn’t that type of game. I can see how some may like it. But I think it sucks. I think it’s boring. This is my final score for now. Probably won’t give this one another shot.
Final Score: B-
I loved the new XCOM games. I played each of them twice, which is rare for me. I'm not completely sure what's turning me off with Pheonix Point. It might be the repetitive gameplay, there's not much variety. Or maybe it's the geoscape with the constant allies under attack. I also don't much like how the story is doled out.
Date Dropped: 2020-08-10
Playtime: ~ 10h
Enjoyment: 5/10
Recommendation: It didn't do it for me, so no.
I wasn't having much fun with this game so I put it down for a while and couldn't bring myself to pick it back up. The level design was pretty drab and I didn't much like the boss fights. I also wanted to play as a caster and built myself for it but 7 hours later I still haven't found any caster items/spells/whatnot.
Date Dropped: 2020-08-02
Playtime: ~ 7h
Enjoyment: 5/10
Recommendation: There are better Souls-likes out there.
6/10
very good for its time
very good for its time