Recente recensies door ElMico

Great little indie game, really enjoyed getting across the bridge. Wasn't too hard to grind out all the achievements, and I felt a sense of accomplishment in coming up with new strategies in "chess" to beat the troll and earn some of the more challenging achievements. If you like chess but don't take it too seriously, then you'll likely have as much fun as I did. The art and sound design seem to be somewhat inspired by one of my favorite games, Return of the Obra Dinn. Like RotOD, you'll probably be better off playing the game after only reading my vague review here.

This is a great point-and-click adventure game. The story is really interesting, with layers of mystery as you try to figure out what is going on. You just *know* this boy and girl *have* to be connected, but how? The game is not perfect, but has the definite feel of a Double Fine game and I highly recommend it. I won't say too much, just play it and enjoy it.

All you need to know going in is that you can switch freely between the two characters at any time. The game has a few points where you are basically "paused" on one character until you catch up in the story with the other. I recommend playing little bits of the game at a time with one character, and then switching to the other. Wait until you feel like you've made a solid step in the story, maybe indicated by an achievement, and then switch. That is how I tried to play on my first run through.

For achievement hunters, I'd suggest you play through the game for fun without looking at achievements and with no guides (I had to look up hints for one or two puzzles), and then a second playthrough to get any achievements you might have missed. I spent about 10 hours on my first "fun" run, 3 hours getting the other achievements, and then 1 hour for the hardest achievement. If you can, do the last achievement in a third and final run right after your second achievement run, as it requires you to beat the game in under an hour. I was pretty nervous about being able to pull it off, but I got it first try. I made several mistakes, and still beat it with about 10 minutes to spare. You will be pretty familiar with what you have to do in each section after playing through twice, so just pause and think ahead, and then execute as quickly as possible.

I rarely buy games full price, and I feel like this one shows up in Humble Bundles, but if $15 for probably 10 or so hours seems like a good deal to you, I had a blast.

Fun little point-and-click game. Love the art, and the puzzles are generally straightforward and solvable. I finished the game in just over four hours, and didn't use any hints or clues. There was probably two or three times during the game where I got really stuck and just had to go through all the areas and try everything on everything, but it never got to the point where I felt like giving up. Unfortunately there isn't much of a story, or at least any background for what is going on. I wasn't really compelled to help Josef save his girlfriend and get revenge on all those mean bullies, but the art and puzzle design was what kept me going. Throughout the game you encounter little unique puzzle games that you need to solve to progress which almost all feel original and match the feel of the game.
I'm cheap so I wouldn't probably pay $10 for it, but let this game at least be a positive draw towards the next Humble Bundle it appears in.

I suggest you don't read any reviews, watch any videos, or find out any information about this game until you play it. You'll enjoy the unique experience the game has to offer if you go in completely blind. A friend bought the game for me and urged me to do the same and I'm glad I did.

If you have already played at least some or are just going to ignore what I just said (jerk), I'll give a brief, completely spoiler-free review and some tips. Overall, I really enjoyed the game. Although the style of gameplay probably was designed around doing as little animation as possible, it still makes for a fun experience. I almost felt like a cross between Sherlock Holmes (probably the Benedict Cumberbatch one), Jessica Alba in that eye movie, and a reverse Minority Report Tom Cruise. The game has almost zero replay value once you complete it, unless you come back in a few years after you forget everything. I'm a little surprised the game has such a high rating, I'd expect at least a 9.0/10 but the game is pushing 10/10 despite having a few minor flaws. Anyway, just play the game, it's worth it. I solved every fate in about 8 hours.

A few tips and suggestions for your playthrough:

1. You can't get all the achievements in one run unless you want to have a sucky first experience. One secret achievement requires you to label every fate as being murdered by the captain, so in order to do that you cannot correctly lock in any fates (i.e. you have to play through the game watching scenes without using the book. Don't ruin the game for yourself and do that). Just play the game normally and if you're an achievement hunter like I tend to be, you can do a quick second run to get those last to achievements in just a couple hours.
   
2. Don't leave the boat until the game literally tells you there's no point staying.
   
3. Pay attention to every little detail. You will have to use clues such as where people spend their time, who they hang out with, what they wear, and how they speak/refer to one another. Make sure you look everywhere on the boat and in memory scenes, use the map, study names and nationalities, and pay close attention to the big sketches of the crew.
   
4. After playing through the game twice, I'm pretty sure there are clues as to every person's identity, but you have to be a genius to pick up on them all. You're not a genius, so you're going to have to guess. Use the "fates unlock in threes" mechanic to your advantage. Get two easy fates that you are certain will be correct and then you can randomly guess names for a third, difficult fate. Pay attention to the difficulty tick marks above people's pictures--if you can't figure out a level one fate, you're missing something easy.
   
5. Just go with your gut on most fates. The game is designed to be beatable, and the most obvious solution is usually the right one (just make sure you look closely to observe every detail!) If there's a group of people standing around someone dying, the person talking to them is probably standing the closest. That sort of thing.

Here's some final mild SPOILER thoughts about the game.
The ending is underwhelming, but I don't know what I expected. Your house experience is kind of cool, but the final chapter is kind of like the last few pieces in a puzzle. You can understand what the picture is before you place them, you're just missing a few details. Anything you'd call a "twist" happens along the way, overall I'm OK with it. I really enjoyed the experience of the story becoming more and more mythical as you go. I wish there was a little more dialogue to explain some of the mystery of the shells and sea creatures, or perhaps secret side information that could be found, but I still really enjoyed the game.

Only bother with this if you want to boost your number of completed games. Yes, it's free, but it isn't a good clicker, even for a satire game. The casino minigame isn't too bad and became my preferred method for making money, but I wouldn't say I enjoyed completing this game. I can't recommend it because it just isn't fun at all, and there isn't even anything interesting to look at.

I am going to give this game a thumbs up, but with a disclaimer.

Putt-Putt Joins the Parade is a great introductory educational game for a child. The game is very simple and straightforward, and often gives obvious hints to help solve the basic obstacles you face. There are a few tricky parts that a very young child may figure out, but overall there is nothing remotely challenging.

The game is "fun" for what it is. If you played the Humongous Entertainment games as a kid, this first installment in the Putt-Putt series is a sort of origin story for the deep bond between Putt-Putt and his pet dog, Pep. If you have never played any of the Putt-Putt, Pajama Sam, etc. games, then you probably shouldn't get this game.

The main issue is the game is extremely short. I beat it in 20 minutes, and I tried to take my time and enjoy the game, clicking most of the animated environment objects. Full price I wouldn't recommend anyone get this game unless they want a "classic" and simple game for children. It tries to teach early lessons such as recycling, working hard to earn what you want, and being careful to cross the street (though Putt-Putt is a car, so this lesson doesn't translate very well).

Bottom line: get this game if you love the Humongous Entertainment games AND it's on sale or in a package deal. Otherwise, it probably isn't worth your time. I got it in a large bundle, and so probably paid less than a tenth of the full price.

This game is 100% novelty. Honestly, it really isn't a good game (and it isn't supposed to be). I am so torn between thumbs up and thumbs down. I beat it in an hour and a half (used the "tab, tab, enter" glitch to get finish game 10x), and I'm not sure if you should too. I mean, the game is free, so if you're really bored then go for it. Also, it's good if you want to bolster your "completed games" number like I did. Other than that though, it is probably a waste of time.

The Fresh Prince of Basement:

Well, this is a story all about how
You're about to buy Isaac, get your card out now.
So, if you'd like to read a review about this awesome game,
I'll tell you how this is the best indie game ever made.

In a little house on a hill, born and raised.
Cellar 1, fighting Haunt, where you spend most of your days.
Walking through rooms, shooting tears, getting tools
That you'll need to kill bosses; there's not too many rules.

When delusional mom, who was up to no good,
Started watching garbage on the old boob tube.
She had one little vision and got her knife,
So you jump to the basement and run for your life.

You look for an item room, and when you draw near,
The item held inside is a cracked little mirror.
If anything, it's totally garbage tier,
But ya know, man, whatever, just find homing tears.

Drop. in. to Womb 2, it's floor number 8.
Really strong, but for Hush you're about a minute late.
Better get ready mom, for this pain you'll attone,
Cuz I've got Tammy's Head and my fave, Brimstone.

(P.S. Will Smith say buy the dlc too, thank you.)

This is a great indie game. I got all the achievements in about 25 hours when the game first came out, then put another 25 hours in to get all of the new "Birthday Update" achievements, a few of which are very challenging.

I’m not very well spoken and I don’t have much cohesion of thought, but I’ll do my best to explain a little of how the game works and what makes it fun.

In Heat Signature, you zip around the nebula in a tiny ship that has the ability to dock with other, much larger ships. The objective of the game is to take contracts which ask you to board one of these larger ships, complete a task on the ship, and then escape with your life. These jobs can include stealing an item, killing a specific person, kidnapping/rescuing someone, or hijacking the entire ship sending it crashing into a station (doesn’t actually destroy the station in a cool way, it just kills all the bad guys there so you can use it as your own). The operators of these ships get quite peeved if they find out you boarded their ship, so you have to plan your mission out as you go. All of the larger ships you find are procedurally generated, and although each of the factions that owns the ships have a particular style and general shape to the ship, each one will have a different layout of rooms, hallways, and loot chests. The guards on them can have a variety of setups such as shields/armor, swords/guns, teleporters, heat sensors, and radios to alert other guards. However, you can obtain a number of different weapons and gadgets to assist you, like silenced guns for stealth takedowns or a tool that deactivates shields.

You don't play as a single character, but switch between different (also procedurally generated) "rebels", each with their own perks and starting kit, all of which are working together to wipe out the four warring factions in the nebula (I think). There is some kind of story behind it, with like two people you can talk to to find out out what's going on, but the story is not central to the gameplay and was obviously added later do try to give the game more depth. Honestly, it doesn't really much of anything to the game.
If the guy you're playing as dies or is captured, then you have to play as somebody else, starting them over with minimal equipment, but still in the same nebula. When you start as a new character you can only do easier missions because you won't have the right gear, but eventually you build that character up enough to do more difficult and rewarding missions. There is also incentive to "retire" your characters after you complete several missions with them.

A large part of the game is the ability to freeze time at any moment. This allows you to chain together a series of attacks and movements that normally would require a high level of skill and accuracy, though all weapons and tools have a cooldown between uses so you have to plan ahead. Sometimes you may teleport into a room, pause, decide to smack a guard with a wrench, then pause again, then shoot a second guard, then pause, and finally throw your wrench at a third guard. If you were to cut out all the pause time, you can easily in my example take out all three guards in less than a second, which means none of them will have time to sound an alarm. I really like the pause feature, as it makes the game a lot more strategy based and a lot less focused on reflexes. There have been times when a string of moves didn’t go according to plan like maybe a shielded guard came into the mix and I didn’t have a way to kill him. After pausing for a few moments, I typically will end up doing something like shooting a fuel drum and throwing the whole lot of us into space.

The Birthday Update added quite a lot to the game, and although I didn't like it at first, I think the changes were good ones. Essentially, before the update, you could sprint through the ship with a bunch of stealth shields which make you invisible for a few seconds, and easily complete any mission. It was fun, but there were a few exploits like that that make the game too easy. However, the new update added new types of guards which do things like disable ALL gadgets in certain rooms of the ship, guards which will hunt you down and kill you instantly, or guards that give impenetrable shields to everyone around them so they must be killed first. These additions make you think a lot more about how you need to complete your missions (and in the case with the “Jammer” guards, make you hurry!), and require you to use a wider variety of gadgets. (Though on assassination missions, you can still just fly around until you find a smaller and weak-crewed ship, hijack it, and then shoot the target ship until you kill the assassination target. "Tough Hulls" were added to high-level ships, but I still have been able to blast through them with enough shots.)

There are a lot of fun gadgets to use as well. My favorites include:
- Glitch Traps, which teleport a guard to a specified location when they step on it (such as into your private ship, or into the vacuum of space).
- Subverters, which allow you to "invert" an enemy's shield so when they shoot at you it reflects back and they shoot themselves, or which allow you to "invert" a sentry gun’s targeting system so it only shoots the guards on the ship instead of you.
- Acid/Crash Traps, which will make guards more vulnerable when they step on them It's fun to place one at an intersection and then lure guards around the corner to where you're waiting to smack them over the head with a wrench.
It's also just loads of fun to do a kidnap mission where you work your way to the target and wait until they're by a window, then shoot the glass out. This will suck them (and everything else in the room) out into space, where you can remotely pilot your small ship to catch them (and you).

Another cool feature is that although there is no multiplayer (because of the pause feature), there is a little interaction between friends. Essentially, when you "retire" a character, you can select one item from their inventory, rename it, and then send it into the pool of lootable items in the game. As you play, you'll find both items that you passed on, as well as items your friends passed on, each with it's own custom name and the number of times it was previously used. There is a similar system for when a character gets captured. It is possible for you or a friend to have a character with a mission to rescue that lost character, and then if successfully rescued they become playable again (until they die, are captured, or retire).

Although the gameplay is very straightforward and you're just doing the same thing over and over (get a job, fly to the ship, complete the task, return, repeat) there is enough variety in the mission objective and guard equipment to give you many hours of enjoyment. It’s certainly worth the full price, but definitely buy it when it goes on sale.

This game needs to keep updating. Oh well. It is still very nice.

-------

July 24, 2018
6 years after my original "review"
The game has had quite a lot added to it since I made my original review, and I certainly have... matured a lot since then. I believe I originally said that it needs to keep updating because the creators announced that they had finished with it, but there was still a lot that I thought could be done with the game. I believe this was before hardmode had even been added. I certainly got my wish.

I still recommend this game, I am currently approaching 500 hours and I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience. However, this game is not without its flaws.

- Tons of content. There are over a dozen bosses with unique loot, wave-based armies to fight, over a dozen NPCs to find/unlock, and countless weapons and tools.
- Tons to explore. A lot of people called this game a Minecraft ripoff when it came out, and I couldn't disagree more. Exploration in Terraria is 10x more fun because of all that there is to do. Minecraft is more about building while I would argue that Terraria is all about exploring, most of which takes place underground. There are so many different biomes that have their own set of enemies. Half of the bosses in the game are found in a specific location/biome. There is a huge dungeon and an ancient temple to explore, and the entire world is peppered with abandoned structures that all have loot.
- Expert mode. If you like a challenge, you can play through the game with harder enemies and bosses, and expert-specific loot.
- Lots of replay value. I have played through the game probably four times total, generally starting a new character and world whenever I revisit the game after a break. Although I am pretty bored of mining at this point, I still enjoy the game each time I play. For me it has been a game I sink 50 hours into, then stop for 6 months, then come back and play for another 50 hours, and repeat.
- Multiplayer is great. I really haven't done a ton of multiplayer, but what I have done was a lot of fun. Earlier in the game's history multiplayer was a lot harder to set up and so it turned me off to it or a long time, but I played through most of the game with 3 other friends recently and we had a great time.

- Earlier content is better. In my opinion, the content on average gets worse the further you get into the game. Everything gets "cooler" looking, and feels more advanced, but this is probably due to the fact that each large update is added to the end of the game with a new tier of bosses and equipment. Maybe it is because I have been playing the game since there were only like 3 bosses, but I just enjoy the earlier stages of the game more than I do the later. Not that the late game is bad, but something about it isn't as fun for me.
- The Dungeon Defenders 2 crossover is silly and out of place. You stumble across an NPC that doesn't look anything like the other NPCs and he sells you a thing that spawns some waves of enemies in a certain area. The enemies reward you with a special currency to buy special equipment which you also buy from that NPC. It all looks good and obviously wasn't rushed or anything, but just feels so tacked on and doesn't fit with the game at all. I rarely touch it.
- Building isn't super fun. Some people really like to build big structures and fancy houses in this game, but like I said earlier, Minecraft is much more of a building game. There are loads of different decorations in this game, but I personally have never really enjoyed using them. I generally end up with a tall wooden box to house my NPCs, and a wide underground room for all of my chests.

In the end, though, I’d say just go ahead and get this game, it is a lot of fun and there is a lot to do.