Recent reviews by Volsung

Dome Keeper is a 2D rogue-like horde-lite genre game that centers around grid-based digging.

You're dropped onto a planet (in a glass dome) and, in the base game, you're tasked with finding a relic that's buried deep underground while waves of enemies attack your dome.

As you dig for the relic, you will find upgrade materials that you can use to improve your dome and its defensive capabilities (as well as some other stuff).

Also, while you dig, you'll find interesting gadgets and other natural phenomena that change how you play the game.

The final part of the game is defending your dome from waves of different enemies that vary slightly from run-to-run. There are several different main offensive weapons to defend your dome, and each take some time to master.

That's about it! There is more in the game, but it all builds on those main principles.

I love this game! The atmosphere is amazing, the music is good, the game is easy to learn and hard to master.

On a scale of Solitaire to Stardew valley, this game is closer to solitaire: you play to get better at the game, there's not a lot of story/world building, and there's pretty much one thing to do (with game variations of course). Its the perfect way to spend a short gaming session, or to sink into after a long day at work.

Pairs amazingly well with the Steam Deck

I only like pretending to support a terrible organisation. We dive together or not at all.

Dredge is fun. The atmosphere is spooky, the themes are eldritch, Just a fun game.

This is a quest game where everything is more or less fetch-quests, but in an interesting way.

There's some inventory management, puzzle solving, upgrading etc.

Over all, a fun way to spend 12-ish hours (or if you love the fishing, many many more hours than 12).

I went to get Boozer's bike on foot and left mine at lost lake. 20~30 tense minutes of running through a rain storm later, I get Boozer's bike, queue cut-scene ride back to lost lake. Addy pays to retrieve my bike, the one that's been 10 feet away from her this whole time.

10/10, would run cross country without saving again.

Fun game and is free. If you like Elite: Dangerous, this might be worth a try.

The game is a 2D space "sim" (lite) about getting more money, more ships and completing story missions.

The game starts you out with a basic ship (you get to choose one of three different ships, kinda like Pokemon I guess) and the first part of the game is about clawing out a living by buying/selling goods and completing missions. After you pay off your debt, a large portion of the game is exploring new systems, getting cooler ships and decking them out with better outfits.

The second large portion of the game is the story missions. I won't really spoil anything, but they're fun.

This game does have some downsides: It's easy to get rich quick/cheese missions, but not so easy that the game is trivial.

If you like min-maxing your profit margins, enjoy some light combat, and like to read lots of flavor text, this might just be the game for you.

Even if it doesn't sound like your type of game, why not give it a try? It's free! (Speaking of, if you do like the game, please go donate to the dev team for all of their hard work!)

- PC Requirements: Low
- Masochist requirements: High


This game is hard. It's really hard. It makes me mad on a regular basis. But weirdly enough, I don't find it discouraging. Every time I fall down the mountain, losing all of my progress, I get to learn how to climb back to where I was faster.

Anyways, you might like this game if you enjoy honing your "skill" at a specific task and don't mind regular set-backs. Great to play while listening to a podcast or book.

Fun game!

Not a ton of content: There seems to be only 4 ships to disassemble, but there are several different configurations that they can come in and so far the small changes have kept me engaged.

The story is... there: Not super compelling in itself, but the atmosphere is engaging so for me the story is just some nice flavor on top of the "pay off your huge amount of debt" progression of the game.

To me the real appeal of this game is the zen that comes from pulling apart a massive ship and watching it disappear into its component parts.

My biggest gripe about the game is this: Your mouse movement has inertia. If you look up and then stop moving your mouse, your view will slowly continue up for a bit longer. For a game that sometimes requires precision mouse movement, this is extremely frustrating.

I have lots of other thoughts about the game, but to keep this short: If you like games like Power Washer Simulator, this might be the game for you.

The best part of the game has to be the sound track, my favorite song is definitely: BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR BZZZZ BZZZZZZZ BZZ BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. My second favorite song is: Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding

Valheim is about becoming better geared, exploring, building and (according to the intro) killing a set of bosses. Each boss builds up to the next boss, with some (occasionally vague) hints of what to do next. Each boss seems to have an area "dedicated" to it, similar to a biome in Minecraft. Each biome is more difficult than the last, with tougher enemies, sometimes deadlier living conditions, and higher tier resources to make better gear.

The main "progression" loop is to venture into a new area, learn its dangers, explore, build a base or two, gather the desired resource, process said resource until you're geared up enough to fight the biome's boss. That makes the game sound bland, but it's quite enjoyable.

Besides the main progression loop, there are several other things that you can do, I would say the main one is base building, followed by some (comparatively) light resource management (no where near as intense as games like Satisfactory or Factorio). There are countless other interesting things to do, mostly stemming from those two things and crafting.

I think my favorite thing about this game is that things usually feel purposeful. There's a reason you're not just going to yolo it out in the woods, mining all day and all night: You'll die, or your equipment will need maintenance (there is durability in the game, but it's pretty forgivable since item repair takes no resources, rather you just need to repair it at the right crafting station), or you won't be able to transport everything back effectively. You might find yourself building infrastructure (like roads) to speed up some difficult transportation.

What are the cons of the game?

- enemies can be cheesed sometimes in silly ways.
- There are portals for quick travel between bases, but certain items cannot be carried through portals which can make transporting said items a pain
- Sailing is very fun, but can quickly become monotonous when you start having to transport items regularly (see above con)
- Some enemies are annoyingly difficult to kill

All those said, they aren't too much of a deal breaker for me. What has made me put this game down is this:

It's easy to get stuck in a death loop. Most of your "power-ups" come from armor, weapons and food not from "leveling up", and when you die, you drop everything you were carrying (including armor and weapons), and need to return to the spot where you died to retrieve your gear.

As you progress in the game, some areas will effectively requires some of the armor/items you dropped at death. This is a problem because later tier equipment becomes very time consuming to make, so at least in my case, I tend to only have one gear set that's suitable for the area I died in. Luckily, that's usually not a problem, especially after you've been in the area for a while, but can be quite a pain if you're out exploring, far from your base, in a new difficult biome.

I've spent over an hour trying to get my stuff back, running naked through hostile areas just hoping that an enemy doesn't see me and one-shot me because that is quicker than re-making the gear set I lost.


That con isn't enough to make me not recommend this game. I still love it.

I recommend this game if you enjoy a chill farming/building experience mixed with occasional patches of desperate fighting and some annoyance if you overextend into new biomes.

To review this game, I'm gonna use a food analogy.

This game is like an fried egg. Why? Well, that happens to be my current favorite way to cook and eat an egg. No other real reason.

If you don't like eggs, you're not going to want a fried egg no matter how it's cooked, and if you like eggs, but only like deviled eggs, you aren't going to want a fried egg.

But, if you like a good fried egg than look no further! This is the meal for you.

Potion Craft is sort of like a point-and-click game with elements of planning and exploration. The game can roughly be split into 3 parts:

- Resource Management
- Planning/Exploration
- NPC interaction

Let's start with the last one. A large portion of the game is interacting with customers, trying to figure out what potion they want and making it for them. The interactions aren't very deep, but they can be fun at times.

The Planning and exploration part of the game is really the "meat and potatoes" of the gameplay loop. You have an "alchemy" map which starts out unexplored. In the center is a potion of water. By adding different ingredients to your cauldron, you can start to plan out a path for your potion of water to take. Stirring the cauldron starts your potion moving down your planned path, with your eventual goal to be to reveal new potions and prepositionally line up your potion of water with the new potion you've discovered.

The potion making gameplay is a bit more complex than that, but it somewhat fits into the: "easy to learn, hard to master" category.

One of the main complexities with the Exploration/Planning portion of the game is Resource Management: over the course of the game, you will find yourself short on certain ingredients and will need to make due with what you have. You also have a strong incentive to make your potions as cheaply as possible. I really enjoy this: there's something satisfying about making an excellent potion with very few ingredients.

For me, the biggest CON of the of the game is that as you explore more of the map, it can be harder and harder to get to previously discovered potions. There's a recipe system where you can save a potion, and without it, the game would be way too monotonous. However, if you've just spent 20 minutes and several expensive ingredients to explore and find a new potion, you probably aren't going to want to save it to a recipe, instead, you'll need to spend another 20+ minutes planning how to get back over to the potion, but this time being resource conscious.

Another hard part of the game (which becomes much harder later) is that sometimes a customer will want a potion you have yet to discover. The game is very smart and doesn't put any sort of time-limit to serving a customer, but it can be daunting to have to explore the map for a new potion when you have little to no idea where it will be (the earlier potions sort of have a system, but as far as I know, that system kinda becomes useless later in the game)

Anyway, to end this rather long and ramble-y review: I really enjoy this game. There are enough new things to keep me interested and the gameplay isn't too demanding.

If you want a chill single-player experience, give this game a try!