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Home is Where One Starts... is a short walking simulator that puts you in the shoes of a young girl, in a memory from childhood that the narrator, now grown up, remembers. You are free to walk about and find points of interest to trigger more memories.

• Vague but Inticing back-story - I cannot comment on it, as it is very short and I would spoil the whole plot, but the narrator gives little information about her past, but which can be deduced upon to reveal the situation.
  
  
• Calming Music - While you explore, beautiful music will join you, which is quite relaxing in my opinion, and combined with the wonderful environments make this walking simulator enjoyable.
  
  
• Easy Achievements - There are 7 achievements, 6 of which can be completed in a single playthrough, and most of them concentrating on paying atention to story details and acting upon them, or simply discovering interactable items or locations.
  
  
• Cheap - While usually I don't factor in cost when reviewing a game, this short story also asks very little of your wallet.

• Very Short - The game took me around 35 minutes to fully complete and explore, leaving very little replayability.
  
  
• Little Narration - There are only about 10 short auditory narration triggers. The story told is more visual that audible. Could have been much more.
  
  
• Mediocre Visuals - While the game looks good, and the lighting is just right, it suffers from low anti-aliasing and dodgy shortcuts, such as textures that rotate with you and flimsy foilage.

This is a good one-time-only exploration game with a lovely athmosphere and an apparently shallow, but deep backstory. If you are into short visual story-telling and walking simulators, pick this up, especially due to its low price.

If you liked this review or want to see more of my recommended games, you can view my reviews here, and be sure to follow our curator group: Follow Original Curator Group

CO-OP: Decrypted is a 3D puzzle platformer with robot protagonists, Red and Blue, than need to collaborate in order to get to the exit of the levels. While this is in no way a hard game, without new or original concepts and co-op a little to be desired for, this is quite an interesting game worthy of your interest.

• Enjoyable Singleplayer - Due to the nature of the game's progression throughout the levels, singleplayer is both achievable and fun, even if the levels were meant for co-op. The lack of time-based puzzles allow you to easily switch between the two and complete the level by yourself.
  
  
• Long Levels - So far, the game features three chapters with seven levels each, but don't think you're getting only twenty one levels. Each level is actually a long tunnel of rooms, each with it's own puzzle. Most of them are ridiculously simple, but each stage takes about four to five minutes to complete.
  
  
• Robot Powers - This is one of those games where you need to collaborate because each robot has it's strengths and weaknesses. Red moves fast, jumps further, can move boxes and charges Blue with energy, while Blue is slower, but can explode, destroying turrets, weak walls, or clearing piles of obstacles.
  
  
• Nice Level Design - The game play is 2D, meaning you are restricted to only one Z coordinate, however, the levels are 3D, with nice decor, decent lightning, and great ambient music.
  
  
• Challenges - Added replayability for the achievement hunter, you can challenge yourself with finding hidden orbs that require a bit more attention to reach or try to speedrun through the levels, or try not to die. Good luck!

• Too Easy - Because of its 2D movement system, the game really limits itself on how many things you can do. The only tricky parts are conveyor belts and deadly electric barriers. Most of the time, it's not a puzzle game as much as it is a jumping simulator. Also the levels are too linear. When you get to the most you can reach with one robot, you just switch to the other one, press a button, and all will make sense. You don't need to figure out when you have to switch robots, its always obvious.
  
  
• Local Multiplayer Controls - The game is designed to work with a gamepad, but the controls are just as good and comfortable to use on a keyboard. But you can literally play this game only with one hand, using a maximum of 10 buttons at best. However, you cannot assign Player2 controls to other buttons on the keyboard. Instead, you are supposed to plug in a second controller, which is disappointing because 3/4 of the keyboard is left unused.

A fun little game that could be an excellent game to play with your kids or your bored friends. Optionally Challenging without being boring, I recommend this to anyone who is looking for a casual puzzler.

If you liked this review or want to see more of my recommended games, you can view my reviews here, and be sure to follow our curator group: Follow Original Curator Group

The Talos Principle: Road to Gehenna is the first major DLC of Croteam's acclaimed puzzle game. Click here to read my review of the base game. This add-on introduces a separate campaign with more difficult puzzles and a brand new plot. You play as Uriel, one of Elohim's messenger, and your mission is to save the ones who were sent to "prison" in Gehenna before the simulation starts to delete itself.

• New Content - This isn't just a new campaign with some extra levels, glued a name sticker on it and called it a DLC. This brings a very thought out story of what happened with past iterations of the child programs, how and why they were imprisoned and what they made of it. The MLA terminals are now replaced by a Forum Board written by those imprisoned, and instead of collecting sigils, you are rescuing robots.
  
  
• Challenging Levels - There are a total of 24 levels to complete, 16 hidden stars to find, and two sigil puzzles to solve, across 5 worlds. This might appear to be dwarfed by the base game in quantity, but these levels are significantly harder and assume that you have completed the game before and are familiar with all sort of tricks. If you thought that stars were hard to find before, you will be amazed by how much effort, outside-the-box thinking and exploration is required to get (most of) them.
  
  
• Gehenna Forum Board - I very much enjoyed the base game and interacting with Milton and Elohim, but I wanted to be able to communicate with some of the other programs that left messages for me. And regarding the QR Codes, they are still present here, but in very reduced numbers compared to the base game. (And for good reason. All of the residents are locked in a cell. They couldn't just go around painting walls.) But in Gehenna, computer terminals give you access to a forum maintained by its residents, and you can read chats between them, read their fiction stories, view their ASCII art, contemplate the "outside world", even play text-based games. Every member has its own personality and you can really distinguish that. I won't spoil the details about the interaction, but I can say that I bet you'll can't wait to finish a level so you can see what's new on the Board.
  
  
• Level Types - These levels have been made hard, but leaving aside very annoying elements such as Time-Based levels (only two of them) and only a few feature mines and turrets. Most of them are a combination of fans, boxes and lasers. Lots of lasers. In fact, the Star World (bonus levels) are 7 exclusively laser based levels. And don't think they are repetitive. Many of them are hard, unique and require you to really think them through.
  
  
• No Elohim - Elohim sends you to Gehenna to help the ones trapped there to ascend, as it is out of his reach. So technically are his lackey, but it seems to be for a good cause and he won't bother you with godly voice-overs.

• Pricy - While I do not regret the purchase, and I think this is one of the most enjoyable second campaign DLC I've played so far, you pay half the price of the game for a quarter of the levels. However, don't let this influence your purchase. If you enjoyed the main game, you won't be let down by this.
  
  
• Few Achievements - It only adds 4 achievements to the game, and all of them are related to completing the game. I wish there were more of them, to give you an even harder challenge.
  
  
• Ending Choices - There are three possible endings, but they are not very different and all the choices required to determine what happens are not dependent on your actions during the game, only the final interaction with the terminal.

This DLC is totally worth it. If you enjoyed the base game and want to be challenged, look no further and buy it. Hard puzzles, beautifully executed forum interactions and a unique and separate story line with new characters make this an easy sell. Buy with confidence.

If you liked this review or want to see more of my recommended games, you can view my reviews here, and be sure to follow our curator group: Follow Original Curator Group

Dimmdrive is a gaming oriented RAMDisk software with Steam integration. Basically what it does is that it loads your game files onto the RAMDisk using symbolic links. It has some very convenient features over other, free RAMDisk software, so if you have an excess of RAM and are used to these sort of programs, Dimmdrive will not disappoint. The negative review is not in any way reflective on the quality of the program. It is a very functional RAMDisk software, with some good and unique features. The reason I am giving it a negative review is that the decrease in loading times as well as the prerequisites to use this are not that convenient, and I will explain why in a moment.

As I do on all my reviews, I will give you a TL;DR Pro/Con list, and if you are interested in the details, consider continuing the read afterwards.

• Steam Integration - The strongest selling point is that with a flick of an onscreen button you can turn it on and off and jump straight in your steam game, and then when you're done do the same thing and revert everything back to normal. User input is minimal and you can set it up pretty fast.
  
  
• Power Loss Proof - One key feature over other similar software is that it keeps what's on your RAM with what's on your HDD in sync, so that in the event of a crash of blackout, where what you had on your RAMDisk would've been lost forever, here the data is being constantly written back to the disk, so you can rest easy it's not as dangerously volatile as other RAMDisks and offers some degree of redundancy.
  
  
• Automatic Setup - If you want, you can make it so that the program runs automatically on startup and loads your preferred list of files onto the drive automatically. If you use it only for some specific games and don't really turn it off that often or change the files on it, it's a little time saver.
  
  
• Anything-Compatible - Since it uses symbolic links to redirect your computer to the RAM, you can use this with any piece of software, and even has a dedicated tab for sorting and remembering those. You can even load another Virtual Hard Drive for your VM and test out the insane boot times of a make-belief SSD scenario.

• Not that impressive performance gains - Dimmdrive never claimed to improve your FPS, so don't blame the "sameness" of your gaming on that. It does, however, improve load times by a certain degree, although not that drastic of a difference when compared to an SSD. At least not to the naked eye.
  
  
• Requires a large amount of RAM to be worth it - If you ever want to take advantage of AAA titles or heavily modded games you will need very enthusiast grade machine, that begs the question - Why not just buy an SSD instead?

The computer hardware you have is very important here. All of the components in my personal PC are listed on this PCPartPicker List[pcpartpicker.com]. To mention the two HDDs are in RAID0, for better speed. To test, I've used Unigine Heaven Benchmark as well as some often-loading screen games, such as Skyrim, Oblivion and The Witcher 2.

The MINIMUM amount of RAM I would recommend is 16GB, if you wish to load entire games. Anything lower than that is insufficient in my opinion. Dimmdrive takes away some of you RAM and creates a virtual Hard Drive with it. The space you use remains out of reach by any other program. That being said, with 16GB, you take away 2GB for Windows, System Services and other applications you might run in the background, such as Chrome. Then, consider 4GB as reserved by the game you are playing, since most games are 32bit and will never use more. So that leaves us with approximately 12GB of actual storage, which is enough for some games, but not enough for big games that would benefit from faster loading times. For instance, vanilla Skyrim with all the DLC is 9.6GB. If using mods, you would need a lot more space than that. So 16GB is just fine for some games, but to really get noticeable results from high-end games, you will need loads of RAM.

I first tested it with Unigine Heaven benchmark, just for fun, as I knew it wouldn't increase the FPS. And it's half true. While the results were marginally the same, and the max FPS was unchanged, the minimum FPS that is typically recorded at the beginning, when the textures are loaded onto the GPUs memory were doubled from 8fps to 15fps. This shows that games with scenes that are loading the map as you go, such as the majority of open-world games could benefit in frame rate, meaning some micro-stuttering might go away.

However, that is theory. Next I tested loading times in various games, and I will keep using Skyrim as my reference since it's most popular and relevant. I used vanilla Skyrim with all the add-ons. The main menu load time was reduced from 22 seconds on the HDD to 8 seconds on the SSD to 6 seconds on the RDD. Not to shabby. However, once in the game, it provided little to no difference upon entering and exiting new areas and interiors, as most scenes are stored in memory anyways.

So gaming wise, it helps, but only a little. There are a number of useful applications for a RDD in non-gaming, but those can be achieved with other software, even for free.

Which brings up my last point: We've discussed that a lot of spare RAM is required for this. Folks with old, rusty HDDs will greatly benefit, but I find it hard to believe someone would have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ HDD, but loads of RAM to play with, not to mention newer sATA3 dives can offer up to 150MBps, which is more than decent for games. People who can afford rigs with 32GB or RAM can certainly afford a SSD for their Steam Library, so that would be a much wiser purchase, as even if you do get only 1/10th of the speed of Dimmdrive, you get anywhere from 10 to 50 times the storage space, with more reliability, at only thrice the price.

As I've said, this is a perfectly working piece of software, and for those needing a good RAMDrive solution, even for non-gaming purposes, that are interested in the backup feature and great ease of use, I recommend it. For people with lower end gaming machines that look for better performance, I would suggest saving a bit more for an SSD and perhaps even better GPU, extra RAM and the such. You won't find too much help from here.

By the way, Tim. I heard of your new project, CPUCores. If you liked the manner I reviewed this, I will gladly check that out as well.

Exanima is a dungeon crawler exploration game with a very unique approach to combat and gameplay, which is both good and bad, depending on your preferences. The world is NOT procedurally generated, and structured on levels. It features perma-death, and this unforgiving nature of the game forces the player to exercise extreme caution, as every wrong decision could have devastating results.

Note that this game is still in Alpha, and there is no way of knowing how the game will change over time. If I notice anything that might alter the review, I will try my best to edit it accordingly. These points are what I think of the current state of the game, and you will see shortly that a pro/cons list is very hard to put together because of the controversy. Some might like an aspect, some would say it's a deal breaker. As such, I have written these from my perspective. Feel free to move them around the list as you please.

• Beautiful Graphics - It's clear that the developers put together the graphical system first, and worry about the gameplay aspects after. The game looks beautiful, the atmosphere is tense, the lighting system accurate and realistic, the objects are detailed and physics-enabled. Engine wise, this game is pretty well polished.
  
  
• Suspenseful Environment - Due to the fact that this game is permanent death, and most of the dungeon is shrouded in darkness, exploring the labyrinth is really exciting. My eyes are constantly jumping across the screen, trying to observe if it is safe or not. The sound of footsteps, squeaking doors and the flickering light of your torch create a creepy vibe that resembles that of a horror game.
  
  
• Physics Based Combat - One of the main features of this game is the combat system. All weapons and armor have realistic stats that reflect how useful they are to you. Things such as body coverage, resistance to different types of attacks, and how good a weapon is at conveying a certain type of swing, such as slashing, crushing and so on put you make you really consider what you are wielding. Also, everything has mass. You are inflicting damage based on how, where and when you hit the enemy, and the animations are realistic and unique because they are not predetermined motions hard-coded by the developer, they are actual physics simulations.
  
  
• Hand Crafted World - Something that really bothered me on other games, like Torchlight or Diablo, was that the dungeons were so architecturally unrealistic. Not here. Here, everything has a purpose. It is clear what rooms serve what function, everything is beautifully furnished and equipped, and you can discern sleeping quarters, kitchens, forges, lumber stations, interior gardens, studies, storage rooms and the such. You feel like you are actually exploring a working, used to be living-in and used castle.

• Unintuitive and hard to master Combat - Moving is relative to the character instead of the camera, and the physics based combat is really hard to master. Prepare to die often. I would suggest entering the Arena mode before attempting to play the main game. You will see what I mean. It's hard to put into words, but the combat is unnecessarily difficult, even if you get the realistic physics, the way you move and the inputs required are unintuitive and a bit too much.
  
  
• Forced Permanent Death - Many hard-core gamers would see this as a challenge and enjoy it, though combined with the horribly hard to master combat system and movement scheme make it too hard. I've often times found myself not exploring parts of the map because I was afraid of well equipped enemies. It's true, this makes the player think before acting, and encourages a stealthy approach, and I appreciate that, however an option to disable it and use some kind of sensible save system would be greatly needed.
  
  
• Arena Mode Levels - In arena mode, you can test your mettle and practice combat, but it is structured on levels, and is permanent death as well. So, for instance, say I beat the first three levels, but the fourth enemy is hard to beat. If I die, I have to redo the first three levels again! And lost health is not restored after winning a battle (only the temporary damage is restored). So it's very hard to get to a higher level and practice tougher enemies, which is exactly what you want to do in the first place.
  
  
• No Random Map Mode - Not really as bothered by this one, as I've listed the detail put into the map in the pros, but if you take into account the fact you'll most probably die many times, you will be forced to replay the same map over and over again, where every item's location is known (except containers, which are randomised), and the path you need to take is also known. I would like to see a random map mode where you can face a new challenge each time.

If you're wondering whether or not you want to purchase this game, here is my advice. Buy only if you want to support development. While I must admit I see great potential in this game and the developers have made a great job thus far, I am generally against Early Access Titles. It is a great game and a greater challenge to face, and you WILL get frustrated by its difficulty at least a few times, but bear in mind - it's still Alpha.

If you liked this review or want to see more of my recommended games, you can view my reviews here, and be sure to follow our curator group: Follow Original Curator Group

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the fourth installment of the series and one of the most known and loved fantasy RPG in gaming. Released in 2006 by Bethesda, the game is still very played to this day, and has a very active modding community, which is a testament of the life-span of a great game. Embark on a journey full of lore, quests and dungeon explorations in this masterpiece of a game.

• Enticing Gameplay - Oblivion is a game that really nails it when it comes to gameplay. You always find some new quest to do or a new dungeon to explore, people to gossip, barter or fight with. The large, open map provides many opportunities to explore and create your own adventure. Even if you already completed the game and know the majority of quests, it’s still fun to replay them. The quests are very well done, and much more diverse than one might expect, primarily due to the rich backstory they provide.
  
  
• Long Completion Time - Don’t worry about running out of things to do. There are over 200 quests and 400 locations to discover, explore and loot. Not to mention this is a Role-Playing Game. You can have multiple playthroughs, each with it’s own different approach on what and who you are, how you attack, and how you respond at moral decisions in quests.
  
  
• Beautiful Soundtrack - This game has, in my opinion, the best soundtrack in the history of gaming. The music is very well made for each situation. It is relaxing when wandering, thrilling when in battle. Jeremy Soule really hit the nail on its head on this one.
  
  
• Modding - Head on over to Oblivion Nexus to download and install a few of thousands of available mods, that fix most if not all problems vanilla oblivion has. Bug fixes, texture enhancements, ENBs, UI redesigns, quest mods, item mods, gameplay tweaks, and so much more are being offered by the modding community. This is one of Oblivions strongest points, and will definitely make the game several times more enjoyable. Just make sure you take your time to research, download and organise them before you start playing.
  
  
• Expansion Packs - We all know the famous “Horse Armor” DLC fiasco, but let’s not get in the way of its actual expansion packs, namely Knights of the Nine and The Shivering Isles. The latter is considered one of the best expansion packs that were ever released, and comes included in the Game of the Year version on Steam. It adds lots of new content, including maps, items, quests, characters and gameplay elements.

• Vanilla Version - This is just informing you that the vanilla game you get when you first download it is a bit underselling. The graphics are outdated(Duh! 2006 game) and there are quite a few (hundred) small bugs and other inconsistencies that may occur during gameplay, the faces of characters look… well, hideously ugly in some cases. All of these problems and many more are easily fixed with a few tweaks and mods and you can enjoy a better, prettier, and more stable version by installing them. There are loads of bits and pieces I could write long rants about, but there’s a mod for all of them, so I won’t bother. I will concentrate only on the things inherently bad about the game that cannot be fixed (in most cases)
  
  
• Voice Casting - Given that Patrik Steward voiced about 5 minutes of emperor Uriel’s lines, the budget was already out the window, so we are left with about… a few handfuls of voice actors, each representing their race. This makes it a little weird having every member of a gender and race sound the same, with a few exceptions. Albeit, in order to do this, each actor recorded the entirety of the dialogues, even ones that would never be used by their characters, for safe-proofing. A lot of work to be admired, however the problem of little to no diversity between characters’ voices is a little disappointing. Which isn’t to say they sound awful. The sound quality is good and the actors are talented. It’s just that everything sounds the same. Also, you may encounter beggars that change voices radically between different topics.
  
  
• Totalitarian Crime System - There is a running gag of the telepathic guards that roam Oblivion in search for you. Doing any murder, even in complete and utter stealth, even in the most devoid of any witnesses location, that crime will be recorded, a bounty will be placed on your head, and sometimes guards might leave the cities in search for you and they know exactly where you are. Not only this, but touching items is a crime. You are a guest in someone’s home. You see a misplaced fork on the table and just want to nudge it a bit to align it with the plate. Yup, you are going to be arrested. Or say you broke in someone’s house late at night, and you steal an apple. That apple is now known throughout the entire province of Cyrodill as being stolen and cannot be sold to anyone but thief guild fences. You can come to a merchant with 20 apples, but he will specifically know that only 18 of them are righteously yours. You can’t sell the other two. How!? Why!?
  
  
• Uneven Leveling System - (fixable by mods) The world seems to be leveling with you, which seems stupid. By about level 20, every common bandit you find will be equipped with the best grade weapons and armor, which breaks the immersion and unbalances the game. Also, attaining the perfect character (max stats) requires a deep understanding of the leveling system and painstakingly much micro-management.

It may seem the cons list is longer, but trust me, this game is amazing. It is one of my favorite games of all time, and have been rocking a lot more hours before I got it on Steam. If you like RPGs, then this is a must have. I recommend it with all my heart. Be sure to mod it and to try to find everything there is to do in it. To help you, here are some links:

UESP Wiki[www.uesp.net] - Huge Wiki of everything you need to know.
Modding Guide - List of my favorite mods, why and how to install them.

Democracy 3 is a government simulator and an internal politics simulator. You step in the shoes of the leader of a chosen country and administer it, change taxes, modify the enforcement of a current law, introduce new ones, or remove them altogether. Every action you make has its consequences, be they good or bad. That is up for you to decide. How will you run your country?

• Very In-Depth - Even though the interface looks simple and clean, with almost everything being just bars and icons, don't be fooled. There is an enormous amount of micro-management that goes on behind the scenes. Everything you do has a chance to change something, by a calculated, statistical margin. Every group of citizens has thoughts of their own, and the focus group gives you an incredible view of each persons thoughts, opinions, and political affiliations. There are also numerous charts that are automatically generated each term, that show you different things like income, expenses, rise or falls in certain areas such as crime, unemployment, or healthcare as well as what policies or events affect them and by what percentage. I am impressed of the level of detail that went into this simulation.
  
  
• Lots of Choices - This game operates by making, removing and modifying policies. And there are loads of them. How you change these policies affects how your country works, and the level of customization is great. Will your schools teach Creationism or Evolution? Will you favor Oil or Clean Energy? Will you fight crime or promote it? Will you set taxes on product categories? Will you offer subsidized services such as transportation, education and healthcare? It's up to you to decide - all that by adjusting sliders!
  
  
• Beautiful Interface and Decent Music - The gameplay aspects may be complicated, but the interface is not. Everything is beautifully labeled, and divided into categories, and the interface is clean, minimalist and very intuitive. Navigation is a pleasure and the nice ambient music provides a relaxed atmosphere for you to play in. Everything is color coded, charts and other analytic data is easy to read, an overall great interface.
  
  
• Sandbox - In a simulation game, this is a must, and Democracy does follow the rule. You can alter the game settings to your will and change aspects such as what kind of governments your country has, if you can make changes based on your political capital, if you are prone to assassination attempts by opposing extremists, if voting is compulsory or not, whether or not you can be the victim of natural disasters, how long your terms are and how many terms are you allowed to have and many more. You can choose if you want a challenging run in order to try and save your country, or a relaxing dream of the perfect country.
  
  
• Steam Integration - The Workshop is a great place to lengthen you play time, as people are creating numerous policies, country presets or other mods for the game. The Trading Cards and Achievements are also nice incentives to play more and try out new play styles when managing your country.

• No External Relations - The game mentions foreign relations lots of times, but does not quantify it. You don't know which countries like you, which don't, and how that affects your own.
  
  
• Generalization - It sometimes feels like you are running a city, not a country, because the stats you are given are averaged across the population. You don't have things like reports based on certain areas, rural or urbane, poor or rich towns, reports on counties etc. This is mainly because you can choose to run one of several countries, or make your own via the workshop, and that individual statistics like those would be harder to manage and calculate, but it would have been a great feature that would make this the ultimate political simulator.
  
  
• DLC that should have been free - I will start with the disclaimer that I do not own any of the DLCs, but from other reviews and reading their description, I'm not inclined to pay money for them. Sure, they add a few very interesting concepts to consider into the game, but are not so major they require an extra payment.

This is by far one of the most complex and interesting text and charts based game I've played with enough replay value to start as a sandbox enthusiast and end as a well-read political analyst. I recommend it to anyone interested in politics, or moral decisions in government policies, and who want to play "god" with their fictive version of their country. Although, considering the price, I'm kinda on the fence on this one. It is really enjoyable but I wouldn't pay the full price for it. If you are not convinced you'd enjoy this game, wait until a sale. I got my copy for 4,53€.

NotGTAV is indeed, not GTA V. This short game was made in the course of a week by British developer team NotGames and is basically a satirical comedy game that pokes hints at GTA, but that adds it's own elements of comic relief. Gameplay wise, this is nothing more than a game of snake.

• It's fun(ny) - While the game of snake can only get so good, due to the nature of this game, it is quite fun to play. This mainly consists of the mouth-made soundtrack of the game and the accent-driven voice-overs you can hear when nearing your targets. Every time you play it, you listen more closely and discover a new joke.
  
• Charity - Besides the fact that this game comes at a very low price, all the profits go to charity, so you know that your money was well spent for this funny little time waster.
  
• Difficulty Setting - The game offers you several challenges with the different difficulty levels, which may actually prove frustrating and should be attempted only by the bravest of casual gamers. These modify things such as movement speed, time limits, and the use of checkpoints.
  
• The.. uh.. Graphics? - Normally bad graphics and production value of a game should be treated as a con, but in this case it is a feature. The hand-made textures, choppy or nonexistent animations and mouth made sound effects are what makes this game even more enjoyable and truly brings the parody effect to life.
  
• Steam Features - Games with good steam integration always get bonus points from me. I'm pleased to see Trading Cards from a game such as this, as well as a decently long list of fun and relatively easy achievements. Other features like Steam Cloud are not applicable here, as the game is short and does not have progression that needs to be saved.

• Short - Understandable for a game made for amusement and in a weeks time, so don't expect any length from this. The game can be beaten in about 15-20 minutes once you get the hang of it, and it has three stages with 6 levels each, the last one having two variations.
  
• No Level Selection - The game does not have a level selection menu, so if you enjoyed, say, the Lidl level, you will have to replay the camping one first. This would have been an easy to add feature that I'm disappointed is missing.
  
• Horrible Menus - The game does have mouse controls, but no cursor, and the menus are poorly drawn and are controlled via hotkeys. I presume they made it on purpose, but a few extra options and the ability to use a mouse would have been nice.

This game is for people who want to support charity and have a chuckle for a few minutes, as its replay value does not equate for more than two or three hours tops. Buy it if you like Snake and are bored out of your mind.

If you liked this review or want to see more recommended games, be sure to follow our curator group: Follow Original Curator Group

The Talos Principle is a puzzle indie game developed by Croteam and is in my opinion one of the best puzzle games out there and although not comparable to games such as Portal, it's certainly not too far off. The game is well-polished, with a great storyline that will test your brains even when not completing puzzles.

• Many Puzzles - Probably the most important aspect of puzzle games, and where, unfortunately, many disappoint, is the length. Not here. This game rocks a whopping 129 puzzle levels, enough to keep you busy for several hours! The trickiest part is the bonus "Star Sigils" that are hidden or hard to reach, and in order to do that you have to think outside the box and interact with items from different puzzles at once to obtain them.
  
  
• Interesting Lore - I won't spoil the story much, but around levels you will find terminals which give you access to a library containing many readable text files so you can learn about your purpose and the backstory to the game. These are optional, but offer a good read, and often times include easter eggs and gags.
  
  
• Breathtaking Characters - The peculiar thing about this game is that it made me feel like it had characters within it, even though you never actually see them. There is Elohim, a god-like voice in the Sky, Milton, a PC program and Alexandra, a mysterious woman who left recordings for you to find. Even though the former two are not real, but artificial intelligence, the way you interact with them and the dialogues you can have with Milton really make you feel like there is someone you are interacting with. Croteam managed, using only text messages and voice recordings to give you a sense of wonder. Around the world you can also find QR codes (which I've tested, they are actually real) that are the thoughts of other "players" from the past. Some of them appear often and you can even distinguish their personalities. Wonderfully done.
  
  
• Multiple Endings - A thing I find very important in games is choice. Here, you have an open world, and can complete any puzzle you want, at any time, granted you have enough sigils to unlock the area. After you have enough, you have four possible endings to discover. A nice touch.
  
  
• The Story - I promise, no spoilers. This should probably be the first on the list, but without managing to say much about the story so you can enjoy it, I will just say this: It is amazing. You just wake up, not knowing what or where you are and from that point on you just discover - pay attention to your surrounding, read the library entries, collect the sound files, read the QR codes left by those before you and get to a conclusion yourself. The story is also a reinterpretation of the Bible's Genesis chapter, and after you play the game, you will know why.

• No Custom Levels - The game features Steam Workshop, but it only has a few mods and not really any levels, nor does the game come with a level editor. This could have really extended the lifespan of the game, and I hope it will be implemented in later versions, or at least a free DLC. This does not take away from the gameplay experience and should not stop you from buying it.
  
  
• Level Diversity - Don't get me wrong, the levels are all unique in their own way and each serve a challenge, but the game items are only so many. You have the following logic items: Gates, Turrets, Guards, Lasers, Jammers, Fans, Buttons and Cubes... that's about it. While they are combined in wonderful, different ways, some tricks that are learned through earlier levels almost always give a very big hint on how to solve the difficult puzzles in later gameplay. I would have hoped it is not the same.

The Talos Principle is one of the best puzzle games I've encountered so far and definitely worth a purchase if you like a good mind game with suitable backstory and lore. Purchase with confidence, this indie game has better quality than some AAA games.

Trine is the first iteration of the trilogy which bears the same name. It is a 2.5D action puzzle sidescroller with a focus on visual art and environmental atmosphere. The game features three characters - a wizard, a thief and a warrior - which have been magically bound together, and the player can switch between the three in an attempt to fight spawning skeletons and conjure objects to help getting to hard to reach areas of the map. The puzzles are minimal, so don't expect a brain-teaser, however the challenge to overcome obstacles and areas where good timing and reflexes are mandatory keep the game fun, especially in Co-Op mode.

• Beautiful Visuals - What makes this game really stand out from most side scrollers and platformers in general is the art style. The forced perspective turns this game into a 2.5D effectively, however the surrounding environments are actual 3D objects, and they are simply beautiful. Each level has its own assets, and everywhere you go you can see brightly colored backgrounds with beautiful, atmospheric lightning which at first glance will take away the focus from the gameplay just to admire it. The low resources needed to run this game also ensures a glorious 1080p60fps experience to accompany the already fancy graphics.
  
  
• Humorous Characters - Even though the game is not focused on its lore and backstory, the three characters have a personality, and a funny one at that. Through the levels, you can hear them exchange some dialogue that will make you grin at least. Makes the gameplay seem much less fake.
  
  
• Replayability - The levels feature hidden treasure chests and XP bottles as well as a determined number of monsters you need to kill in order to fully complete it. It makes the player want to return to these levels and search for hidden areas. While at times you will struggle to find that one last missing XP bottle and get frustrated, it's still fun to go through the levels again, nonetheless.
  
  
• Skills and Inventory - As you progress through the story and gather XP and find hidden treasure chests, you will level up your characters and improve their abilities, as well as find items that you can distribute as you wish among the three protagonists to boost their stats. Adds a certain degree of strategy as you build your characters and makes spending some extra time in uncovering those secret areas worth-while.
  
  
• Co-Op Mode - You can play this game in co-op with up to two other friends, each controlling one character or anyone can play with anything. Makes the game both more fun and more easy(depending on your friends).

• Not Challenging Enough - the game, even on hard, is pretty easy to beat. If you are careful, even the Hardcore mode isn't too much of a challenge. Do not mistake this with the game being un-fun. It just doesn't represent a hard enough gameplay for those adventurous gamers.
  
  
• Unbalanced Characters - The thief, with multi-arrow shots and extreme maneuverability from the grappling hook is blatantly overpowered, and combined with the mage's "Floating Platform" skill makes it incredibly easy to just swing through the levels easily. The warrior is the most useless of all, except for very little occasions.
  
  
• Short Playthrough - Starting a new game as an experienced player and going through it again at a slow pace will take you about five hours. While a Co-Op wizard Floating-Platform + Thief Grapple style of soaring through the levels, ignoring XP and enemies could get you somewhere around two hours to complete. There are 17 levels in total, along with a boss fight that is more or less... missing. The boss level is just a "Climb to the top of the tower before the lava reaches you" minigame, albeit a bit hard and frustrating.

This game is very fun while it lasts and the Co-Op revives it at times. I recommend this to platformer and action puzzle fans. Steam Achievements, Trading Cards and Cloud Saving, along with the fact that it is bundled with Trine 2 for a very cheap price at any sales are good selling points too, although the gameplay itself is enough to justify the purchase.