Recent reviews by Chronoja

Just more of the Rusty Lake series in all its macabre glory, what more could you ask for.

Was Good

Writing this review for the 2021 Steam awards, nominating this game for the "Labor of Love" award. I'm nominating this because The Binding of Isaac: Repentance released in March of this year but I can't nominate that specifically so this will have to do.

The nomination feels only fair though. My reasoning is thus; The original flash version of Isaac released over 10 years ago at this point. Rebirth released in 2014 as a ground up remake of that the version which was straining under the weight of all the additions it received over time. Rebirth was a solid remake in that regard and between then and now Rebirth continued to receive various updates and additions in the form. These took the form of Afterbirth and Afterbirth+ but towards the end of those releases it started to feel like the creative well was running dry. The Afterbirth+ booster packs released in a fairly janky state and were relatively light on content and were pretty much just mediocre overall. At this point any future expansions seemed unlikely.

Then the fan community started to gain traction and a few prominent fan expansions rose from that scene. One specifically, Antibirth, received official endorsement, support and integration into the main game as the expansion now known as Repentance.

I never played the mod Antibirth so I can't really compare it, but I will say that Repentance completely surpassed my expectations in terms of both quality and content. And this is considering that it launched with several features, mechanics and items missing which the developers are still in the process of fixing and improving. Even in that state it surpassed all my expectations, and seeing how many of these features have been fixed it continues to impress.

I've played this game for over 700 hours and nearly half of that was spent just tackling Repentance content, and I play this game purely with purpose, mostly achievement hunting, and to get that much time out of a game like this and it rarely if ever felt boring speaks a lot to its value for money. You could, and many do, just play this for thousands of hours on self motivated runs or challenge attempts to increase that value proposition even further.

I know some people felt like Repentance ruined a good thing by changing things up a little too much but honestly, after the dust has settled it's clear that most of the changes were needed and the game has indeed benefited greatly from them.

Not to say the game is perfect, there are still several key parts of the pre-Repentance era that went unchanged but there have been various promises that these will be looked at in a future. If the same amount of care goes into addressing those parts of the game then things can only get better for this game.

So yeah, a real Labor of Love for what started as a quaint little flash game over 10 years ago. Very few games get to live this long, to really see their potential truly realised.

Fascinating seeing how different this game has become, yet how familiar it remains after nearly 20 years.

Not really sure what to say about this game, it's simultaneously pretty bad and pretty good. It launched in a fairly sorry state, plenty of bugs and softlocks but the developers worked pretty quick to patch them up, but the awkward design decisions and unfairness strewn throughout hold it back from being a truly great game. Despite the variety it's fairly light on content and you'll have seen most of what the game has to offer within a handful of runs, but it's also still enjoyable enough that you could sink 20 - 30+ hours depending on how many bugs ruin your games, unlocking everything.

I guess it's real strength is in it's simplicity. The kind of game you can pick up and play for an hour and feel satisfied, if your run goes well. But it's also bad as a rogue-lite since it's one of those games where you can simply lose and learn nothing because you just got screwed by randomness.

I'll recommend it simply because it stands a chance of improving. And despite its shortcomings it's still fairly interesting and unique.

Phenomenal game.

If you liked Left 4 Dead you'll like this. More emphasis on melee combat with dodge and block mechanics to reinforce this, with ranged weapons being a more limited, situational affair. Each character while playing largely similar, each have access to different weapons which can subtly alter how they approach the game. Can be somewhat fatiguing replaying the some of the maps over and over, yet with a few hundred hours invested in it so far, most of them remain appealing and at times challenging. And to top it all off, there are some stellar people playing this game, high levelled players willing to teach others the intricacies of what may seem to be a relatively simple game.

There's some frustrations, the loot system is excessively random, and makes the game much less accessible, especially on higher difficulties, than something like L4D meaning that people can fall behind in terms of progression. Also the contract system seems to be heavily weighted in leveraging players into purchasing the DLC, which to be fair is mostly quite good, so worth it at the very least while on sale.

The short read of this review is that I really liked Cradle when I played it and it's somewhat sad that it probably doesn't and won't get the attention it deserves.

The developers have managed to craft a beautifully mysterious and intriguing adventure game out of basically 3 locations and a handful of characters, but manages to pack in more atmosphere and uniqueness than most AAA published games, everything from the art direction, characters, story, music, it's all very well crafted and creates a very unique experience.

Not a game for everyone though, love them or hate them, the cube puzzle sections are rather abstract, the limited locations and back and forth between them some people might find repetitive, and if you don't gel with the world, story, characters or atmosphere then you obviously won't get much out of it game as a whole.

If you're ever tired of the standard industry fare, or ever wonder where all the creativity went, consider Cradle, just beautiful and different enough to be special.