Neue Rezensionen von Ghostie

Restock the shelves, serve customers, mop the floors, and pick up trash. All in a day's work at the Convenience Store and then you can go home and spend all your hard earned cash on 'Amazing' purchases and cat food. Meowjiro is an addictive time-management job-simulator game about working to provide for your pet cat… although, beware they are not what they seem.

Accuracy is required for monetary transactions, speed for others. If a task is failed or you take too long, pay will be docked. There is a steady increase in challenge but it never becomes overwhelming. In-game events announced through the news will cause certain tasks to be more prominent the following day. The second mode ‘Math Genius’ will have the player solve how much change is required instead of simply displaying the amount required.There’s no day cycle, the management aspect revolves around responding to tasks efficiently. Once the last task is completed and the last customer has left, the day ends.

The game plays comfortably and responsive using keyboard and mouse but there’s no key-rebind options. Picking up trash felt awkward (although I think this was intentional) and I found the ice cream machine a little deceptive and kept ‘dropping’ them. There is controller support but it felt too slidey trying to target menu buttons so I didn’t try it while playing the game.

The goal of the game is to feed your cats. Doing so will allow you to obtain more cats with in total to collect. I feel this side of the game wasn’t clearly explained in-game and what I’m about to say might be a spoiler for those wanting to go in blind. Feeding your cats will increase scores of meat/water/fish/chicken and reaching certain score combinations will cause a new food item to be available for purchase (this will also fully reset the scores). These items when consumed by a cat will spawn a new cat. You can check score requirements in the ‘Pedia’. I adore how the designs and how they aren’t just different colours! Many of them reminded me of those found in Kekeflipnote’s whimsical meme interpretations of ‘Strange Cats’.

You are given your own apartment which will slowly be expanded from a cupboard to something habitable as you gain more cats. You can sit here as long as you want between work days watching the cats do their thing, as well as reading the news, making purchases and catching up with emails on the in-game phone. There are a few items that can be purchased to furnish the living quarters. The items have set places where the options are usually choose between two to three styles or not at all. It feels very limited and I would like to see more items especially for the cats.

I had a good time playing this game, I genuinely couldn’t stop until I had all the cats! It was very satisfying to complete busy days with no mistakes. There’s lots of charm in the variance and in the little details of the cats, the customers, the purchases and the trash left behind. Watching the items customers pick up seem to match which shelves they visited. I was absolutely shocked when a dog came into the store and peed however, I thought he was going to be a gimmick and buy something but no, just peed. I completed the cat-pedia by day 27 (approximately 3 hours) and had all the achievements by day 40 (approximately 4.5 hours).

Garden Galaxy is a chill and casual clicker where you can build an isometric mini-world. It’s a waiting game, little conical sprites will show up and then you click on them to scare them off, in doing so they will poop a coin that you can place into a magic cauldron to spawn more land and items.

The items you receive are very cute, it’s a simple aesthetic but pleasant nonetheless, they are separated into thematic packs with specific coins to represent them (for example: water coins spawn water themed items). Some items are animated, others spawn in additional critters to roam your garden and some items can even change the weather and sky. Included in-game is a journal so you can keep track of which items you have collected - currently there are over 150 items (over 225 including reskins) split between 11 sets.

I like how much freedom there is with object placement. It is grid based, items fit neatly into each square, but you can also place items on top of other items fairly easily where it makes sense. So long as you have enough objects you can design scenes pretty much how you want.

However, it takes a long time to build up a good mixture of items. If you’re looking to create a certain scene or want a specific item, bear in mind the items spawned are pure RNG. Whilst I’ve seen screenshots of some incredible worlds, after 16 hours my game still looked more like a hoarder's nest and it constantly needed tidying and organising.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929463704

Eventually with a bit of luck you can mildly speed-up the process of gaining specific items with a couple of items - one which increases spawn likelihood and another which prevents item spawns. Both these items are activated by placing an item you already own on top of them.

Unwanted items can be sold back to the cauldron, three items of the same coin pack become one equivalent coin to spend. Unwanted coins can also be saved in piggy banks, breaking the bank will turn those coins stored into the banks’ represented coin. There are also storage items for hiding away clutter.

I think this game is well designed but for a very niche audience. The slow and random nature of the game may frustrate or turn away people, in particular those who just want to be creative and the most optimal way to play is leaving the game running in the background. As far as I am aware, there is also a maximum amount of sprites that will sit in your game at any one time, so frequent checks are necessary to keep on top of coin farming. I had fun in the beginning but found it very tedious later on. Garden Galaxy is still actively being worked on and I look forward to further updates.

Quantum Break is a heavily cinematic sci-fi third-person shooter with light puzzle and platforming sections. I decided to try out this game after thoroughly enjoying one of Remedy’s other games, Control, in 2021. I knew it wouldn’t be as good but I still had a lot of fun.

Jack, our protagonist (Shawn Ashmore), is visiting his best friend, Paul Serene (Aiden Gillen), at Riverport University. He soon discovers that Paul has built a time machine and promptly receives a demonstration but of course there wouldn’t be any story if it didn’t go completely wrong. Jack ends up on the run after the local corporation that has been overtaking the town reports him as being a terrorist.

The game's story is told over 5 acts, with a four episode live action miniseries placed between each of them. The performances of the cast were excellent. It is complicated with a very strong start but it drags towards the middle and fizzles out to an underwhelming ending that feels incomplete, it is however much more coherent than Control. There are unusual sections towards the end of the first four chapters where you act out what you think the antagonist would do in certain scenarios within the story with telltale-esque ‘here’s what your friends and the community chose’ screens presented after you select one of two choices. The rest of the game is fairly linear and I’m not sure if those choices make too much of a difference overall.

When you’re not watching a cutscene or another character is offering some extra exposition, the gameplay switches focus to shooting galleries with the addition of abilities that you can use to manipulate time to your advantage. Honestly, I found the enemies to be a little bit generic, they’re masked men with guns, occasionally bullet sponges with weak points. They do seem to coordinate well and I frequently found myself having to dart from cover to cover as they attempted to surround me or as they consecutively threw grenades where I was hidden. Given Jack gains what are basically superpowers - I never felt truly overpowered once but I loved zooming around and smacking down enemies when the opportunity was provided.

You can carry up to three guns. Despite further on in the plot it’s clear a friendly character has access to a lot of combat hardware - there’s no upgrades for armour (or grenades); Jack fights in just his shirt, jeans and leather jacket, stopping briefly to regenerate health in a corner. The one power that was closest to a grenade felt comparatively weak to what enemies were throwing; however enemies also seemed resilient enough to survive a direct explosion from a car. Ammo is crazy plentiful, there are even times where you can find an infinite ammo bag and almost hunker down.

Environments are immensely detailed and jaw dropping on occasion, real screenshot material if there was a photo mode but I found some of the ‘time’ effects eye straining and confusing to actually play around. The action set pieces featured in levels are some of the coolest I’ve seen in a video game but they’re mostly visual and have minimal bearing within combat arenas. Sometimes they might be used as a running/platforming sequence where you use your abilities to progress. Hidden around the levels are multiple collectables that typically fall into two categories - upgrade points for time abilities and supplements for world building. Collectables and upgraded skills are shared across replays. Check points can be in strange and annoying places, it was a little frustrating how many were before cutscenes.

If you have played and enjoyed this game definitely go and try Control, all the good parts of this game have been expanded and improved there. I’m finding it a little more difficult to recommend the other way around. On the whole, Quantum Break is a decent game with a pretty good story that gets boring and repetitive in parts but not something that I would consider an outstanding must play.

It’s not often to come across interactive media which just allows its users to go wild and create essentially whatever they want. For a rough idea: the first map I visited in this game involved trying to complete someone's jank platforming puzzle whilst being judged by gigantic cats; the second was a world inhabited by sapient frogs that debate over whether it’s better to live in nature or houses. These short descriptions don’t do them much justice, you really have to see for yourself.

Sok-worlds is single player only and first person. Worlds are created by importing stock images from Pixabay to a 3D space. You can layer the images how you want by dragging them around with your mouse; copy placed images; cut pieces from images; resize images; build shapes and platforms using them, not unlike what you could with a stack of cards. Additionally you can add text and choose from a small selection of looping soundtracks. All of these tools are very crude but it adds to the charm even if a little frustrating whilst actually using them.

Being sandbox in nature the creations uploaded can be fairly full on and as far as I can tell there is little to no moderating done. It’s mostly harmless thanks to the limitations of stock images available but it’s definitely not ‘family friendly’ and larger worlds can freeze up the game very easily. I came across plenty of mature content, not quite so many political hot takes, but a shocking amount of ‘Among Us’ references scattered between the genuinely impressive stuff uploaded.

The Main Menu is by far the worst part of the game and it’s a real shame. If you know what you’re looking for there is a search function that works very well but for casual exploring - everytime you leave a world you start back at ‘page 1’ of listings subsequently making you slog back through pages to the point you were at to find the next world to visit regardless of whether you sort by ‘popular’ or ‘new’. Furthering from this when you leave a world, you aren’t presented with an immediate option to ‘like’ them and have to do the same slog should you forget the name of the just visited world and its creator.

I thoroughly enjoyed both exploring the worlds and moulding my own in this game. It reminds me of visiting player created houses in another game I like, Tower Unite. I even found it a little nostalgic of the days when exploring the web wasn’t so streamlined.

Very short, light point and click puzzle room experience. The story is proof you can make entertainment from almost anything. Starting shortly after being evicted from your home by the 'Royal Association of Rich Jerks' you set out to prove yourself to the 'Sink Gods' for vengeance against those who have wronged you. A little bit tongue in cheek there were definitely some humorous moments.

Gameplay and style wholly reminds me of many of the ‘Rusty Lake’ games to the point where it almost seems on purpose. You stand in the middle of a room, you can change to one of four directions and zoom in on objects/areas of interested and an inventory where you can drag items you have collected to interact with the environment.

The game isn’t difficult - even though it’s vague, the entire thing can easily be completed in under an hour. In fact the only time I got stuck was because of the lack of graphic options provided and the game forcing full screen - this distorted and cut off a key part to interact with in a later puzzle for me. Aside from the bonus chapter, the puzzles also felt easier the more progress was made.

An acceptable burger themed clicker but lacking substance. If you want something a little more meaty to satiate a need to click then the simple mechanics of this game will leave you thoroughly disappointed.

You click to earn currency, with that you can ‘develop’ a new burger for your menu and buy people from all walks of life to produce them. After buying five people of one profession another profession unlocks. In the shop you can also: upgrade mouse clicks to a max of 100; bonus cooldown to a max of 50 (10x click rate); and production rate also to max of 100. There’s nothing to do other than click the burger and buy upgrades, no mini-games or hunting secrets. As a final note, some of the English translations are also questionable - for example, ‘petist’ instead of what I can assume is vet and some of it hadn’t been translated at all.

Messy and shallow gameplay, full of bugs and half-baked ideas. You can ignore a lot of mechanics of the game and still have easily gained profits. I have written this review having not played the sequel, Internet Cafe Simulator 2, however after this experience I don’t have much hope for improvement.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2884147728

The game is an open ended management sim where you run an Internet Cafe, purchasing equipment and tending to your guests needs and wants. It’s optimal to just save up for 5 star equipment and skip anything cheaper. Item placement is very temperamental.

A typical in-game day starts by waking up in your rented hotel room and then going to the market where you can eat soup straight from the can. First chore is sweeping your shop. Every evening you leave the cafe without a speck of dirt but every night the trash ghosts visit leaving the cafe looking like a tornado passed through. With at least one machine set up and you’re ready to open up.

Most gameplay is controlled through apps on a stationary computer placed in the entrance of the cafe. Everything from purchasing furniture and hiring staff to gambling and paying bills. I didn’t check my reviews for a while (there just wasn’t any need - money was flowing), when I finally did my game froze for a decent amount of time. Your terminal is also constantly bombarded with pop-ups and ‘hack attempts’ which prevent you from accessing it, you can purchase protection but it’s easier to wait it out.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2884167089

A lot of time is spent trying to get past NPCs, something that only gets worse as your cafe becomes more popular. At one point I was somehow on the roof of my cafe, I’m fairly certain this is due to NPCs walking into me. The entrance doorway is the worst in regards to NPC blockages as it only allows for one to pass, as a bonus - all items you purchase will be dropped off just out of reach from the doorway. AI pathing is awful, NPCs will walk through your already placed furniture, several NPCs also decided to just get stuck on the spot.

One of the strangest game mechanics revolves around balancing the temperature of the rooms. You can place air cons and fans but you can’t manually turn them off and on. Should you choose to do something about temperature imbalance you need to have spare AirCons/Fans and a room to store them, removing and replacing them when needed. Strangely though you can manually turn bitcoin miners off and on.

You can hire a chef. You can also hire a bouncer - he doesn’t always do his job and will let in thieves and other problematic customers. The way you deal with them is to chase after them with a baseball bat. Wishlist: A janitor because I don’t want to clean up trash. A waiter or self-serve vending machines because I never had time to actually serve customers food.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2884147698

Outside your cafe is: the hotel rental which is useless aside from a save feature, there’s one room you can’t even enter; a strip club where you can pay $100 to have a ‘special’ show; market food stall which sells can food, soul, donut, and bread. You can eat on the spot or send it to the hotel fridge. I actually let my hunger bar reach zero… and nothing happened; market pawn stall - good deals here; and finally ??? who sells bitcoin miners in a side alley. Another strange idea, your cafe will be frequently checked by police looking specifically for these. If they find one they will remove the item and give you a fine - to combat this all you need to do is turn them off.

On reloading the game, settings for video/audio/gameplay reset. Continuing a save you may find placed furniture sometimes shifts, even duplicating causing chaos. This game is truly awful but on the brightside, it is very easy to 100%. Like most of the game, achievements are a little buggy and may not popup when they should but it is completely doable.

An adorable reimagining of the ‘Sokoban’ style puzzle games. Although gameplay-wise it’s not doing anything particularly new, it’s packaged with a cutesy pastel cat themed art-style and a simple story about being kept awake at night (which anyone who has ever owned a cat can relate too) that makes it stand out just a little more from other box-pushing clones.

With 50 levels, the aim of the game is in the title - roll the cats to their beds so that everyone can get some sleep before dawn. Puzzles are top down and grid based, you navigate obstacles pushing the cats from behind in one of four directions (up, down, left, right) that you want to go, trying to avoid trapping the cats in spaces where they can no longer be reached or pushed out of. Included is an undo button as well as a restart button, so you don’t have to redo a whole level for simple mistakes.

Levels have a maximum of five ‘cats to roll’, so unlike alternate versions of Sokoban having levels with dozens of boxes, this one never becomes overly tedious. There is one addition in gameplay mechanics that isn’t in your usual Sokoban game and that is the addition of slides/tunnels where once the cat has entered, they don’t stop until it reaches the end of it. This did throw me initially but overall I didn’t find the game particularly difficult, early levels are ridiculously easy and the final levels won’t leave many stuck for too long. In total the game took less than two hours to complete.

Isle of Jura is a casual fishing game seemingly in part inspired by Animal Crossing judging by the squeaky sound effects added to the conversations and the chill vibes from the rest of the soundtrack. It is however very basic and the type of game that makes me wish neutral recommendations were a thing.

Movement and interaction controls feel awkward at times (for both KB+M and Controller). The camera also can’t be controlled, something that seemed like an unnecessary choice and personally made me feel dizzy whilst exploring with a lot of walking into walls/rocks/dead ends.

You play as Alex who sets off to an island to study fish. Jura is a very small island with just five inhabitants not including yourself: a shopkeeper who sells you equipment; a chef where you sell your catches; a camper; a person collecting ‘artefacts’ that can be found and fished up; as well as the ferryman who brought you to the island. The ferryman can also take you out to deep sea once you have purchased the final upgrade. All of these people will do nothing other than standing around waiting for you to interact with them.

There is no day and night cycle but fish do have areas where they’re more likely to be found and have varying difficulty. I also like that heavier fish actually seem to show up as larger on the rod. I don’t like how long the animation takes after catching a fish. Inventory space is limited but caught fish of the same type stack making it easy to focus on one area, sell then move on to the next area. Artefacts have their own display area and whilst you do keep a journal of your caught fish it would have been nice if you could also display fish, especially as you catch way more fish than you need to sell for purchasing all upgrades.

The core fishing gameplay unsurprisingly revolves around patience and timing. Nets are your introduction, very simple - hit when the marker reaches the middle. With standard rods for lake and sea - reeling in seems to be done automatically whilst you balance the tension of the line. Fly fishing however is nightmarish, you have to keep a line in the middle of a green patch that moves around wildly - there aren't any visual clues to indicate if you’re doing well or not, just sound, and it really revealed just how frustrating the controls can be, honestly feeling more like luck than any chance of skill to catch the more difficult fish - on more than one occasion it seemed like the fish got to escape before I even had a chance to react.

I don’t think this game makes for a memorable experience but it was a quiet and peaceful way to spend an afternoon… at least for me until I encountered fly fishing where it became rather miserable. As the sole focus lies in fishing, it could definitely do with being fleshed out and varied, perhaps with the introduction for more specialised rods/upgrades that make fishing easier, even something as simple as baits and lures could give the game more substantial flavour.

It’s so cute! I love it! Full of wonderfully weird and whimsy creature designs, all with their own little personality quirks, Penko Park is an on-rails photography collecting game with light puzzle elements. You start out with basically nothing, just a cart that you can’t control but as you take more unique photos and better quality photos you gain experience which unlock stamps to access new areas and gain new abilities (such as the ability to pause the cart or grab items in the distance).

Creatures are very easy to miss, some blend in with the environment, others require you to do things before they will appear. You have to do similar things to other creatures making to them react and have certain poses to complete their index. Each level has multiple routes so it’s not possible to photograph every creature on a single level playthrough. It took me approximately 2 hours to get enough experience to make it through all four levels and reach the boss but there is plenty of replayability in seeking all the creatures and unravelling their mysteries.

It can be difficult to figure out where to find missed creatures in the end game as the photo album gives no hint about their whereabouts other than the level they are in and even when you do find them - a couple of times I found it was deceptive as for some creatures spawns it's impossible to get three stars photographs however that is just end game, for most of the game finding the creatures is entirely fair and finally completing the photo album was very satisfying.

For completionists - there is one annoying luck-based achievement (What are the odds?) and although it is possible I didn’t get it through natural playing of the game. Fortunately for me it only took about 15 minutes of replaying meet the requirements.

All in all, Penko Park is a rather short game but an absolute joy that I highly recommend. Simple, creative and full of little surprises.