Recent reviews by WhaleBlubber

This game is an absolute treat. Every aspect of it exudes the sort of whimsical and playful energy of hanging out with your friends when you were younger, and without spoiling anything, the short story ties into that theme perfectly. The gameplay itself is also really fun, with a lot of inspiration from games like Breath of the Wild but with some fun twists and mechanics you’ll unlock throughout the game.

It took me about 5 or so hours to fully complete the game, but if you’re worried about playtime there’s definitely some replay value if you really enjoy the movement and gameplay mechanics, or if you like speedrunning, since the game has an in-built timer. All in all, the game is fun, cute, cozy, and definitely worth a purchase in my book!

The gameplay is fast-paced, engaging, deep, and most importantly of all, fun. Whether you’re playing on your own, with friends, or even with random other players through the game’s server browser, it’s just an absolute blast to play. The difficulty scaling is also extremely fair and allows you to play at whatever difficulty you want without punishing you for doing so. Additionally, the progression mechanics in the form of new weapons, new upgrades for your weapons, and new cosmetics for your characters all add a level of replayability that I think only makes the game more enjoyable. The customization available is similar to what TF2 does, but with an even more in-depth range of options available to the player, and an admittedly much easier way of getting all the weapons. The monetization also has to be mentioned, as I think DRG is the gold standard when it comes to fair and reasonable monetization in a paid indie game. There’s constantly new weapons, cosmetics, and upgrades being released for free to all players to unlock through gameplay without any option to pay to speed up the unlocking process. The only things you can buy are a small amount of paid-exclusive cosmetic bundles that get released with every major update. There’s no paid currencies, no gameplay locked behind a paywall, nothing like that. Even the seasonal battlepass is free, and if you miss anything in the battlepass it just gets mixed into the loot pool of standard unlocks, so you can always just unlock it all later.

All in all, I think DRG is a shining example of what an indie game can be, and I would definitely recommend you check it out!

Dead by Daylight is an intensely difficult game to review, at least from my perspective. Despite how many hours I have in the game, I’ve never felt that I really had a good way to communicate my feelings on it. I think Dead by Daylight is an extremely fun game, but it’s also basically the only game of its kind that has had any longevity, which somewhat muddies the waters as to whether or not a competent competitor would sour my opinion of the game.

As I mentioned, a big part of this confusion I feel around Dead by Daylight (DBD) comes from its position as the sole asymmetric PVP game of its kind to have a consistently large player base and a consistent stream of new content and updates. Many other games have come and gone that've tried to do what DBD does, but barring one exception they’ve all swiftly lost players and been abandoned by their developers. Hide or Die, Evolve, Deathgarden: Bloodharvest, Video Horror Society, Home Sweet Home: Survive, and so on. Some of these games technically still exist and the servers aren’t shut down, but if you take a look at the player count for either of these games it seems unlikely that they’ll be making a comeback anytime soon. Many of these games had a large amount of potential in their gameplay and concepts. Hide or Die comes to mind for me as it was an exceptionally janky game with an equally confusing identity and core concept, yet was a very fun game to play before the servers were shut down. Evolve was a somewhat poor execution of the asymmetric concept, but with the triple-A production values behind it, it had the potential to thrust the genre into the mainstream. Deathgarden was literally made by the same company as DBD, Behavior Interactive, yet they still couldn’t recapture the popularity of DBD.

To put it simply, as far as I’m aware DBD is the only currently playable asymmetric PVP game of its kind. DBD is by no means terrible, but I think that fact makes it difficult to really compare to other products. Despite all this, I think I would recommend DBD. The game is strange and at times unbalanced, but it’s updated fairly frequently and as long as you understand the flaws inherent in the genre, and don’t take the game too seriously, you can have a lot of fun playing it, no matter your skill level or number of DLCs.

As a quick summary, I completely and wholeheartedly recommend ElecHead. I think it’s worth the price of entry and if your video games tastes are anything like mine, you’ll have a lot of fun with the game.

To get a bit more detailed, ElecHead is short, sweet, and feels like a callback to a style of game that I don’t see as much of anymore. I saw someone else compare the game to VVVVVV (6 Vs), and I think it’s a pretty apt comparison, but they’re still quite dissimilar in a lot of ways. ElecHead’s emphasis is on platforming and puzzles, without any semblance of a story. You’re a robot. You need to go forwards. That’s all you need.

This is just my personal preference, but I think the limited color palette and near complete lack of text makes for a very endearing atmosphere. Throughout the game you’ll unlock different color palettes to choose from as well, which I think is always a bonus.

I didn’t 100% the game, I might in the future, but I experienced the bulk of the content and it took me about 2 and a half hours. I think for the price that’s a fair deal, and the bonus content can probably give the game another half hour or so, maybe another hour max.

I really enjoyed Unpacking. The simple yet engaging gameplay combined with the wonderfully-told story through each of the levels just makes for a great experience and a game that I’ll doubtlessly be replaying again down the line. There are set goals, and oftentimes you can only place objects in certain parts of the levels, but there’s enough freedom and creativity that I was able to decorate and unpack how I wanted while still being faced with a challenge in how exactly I was going to fit everything into the spots that I wanted them to go. Additionally, the graphics, sound effects, and music are all just absolutely great. In short, I’d really recommend the game to anyone on the fence about it.

Loop Hero is a really fun game with beautiful pixel art, an interesting setting, and an addicting and creative gameplay loop, but after the first 10 or so hours I felt like the game had basically run out of steam. I beat the first two bosses and made a good number of attempts at beating the 3rd before I decided I was done with the game. Like I said earlier, Loop Hero has a lot of redeeming elements such as the art, the gameplay loop, and the setting, but I think it’s held back by how repetitive the game feels, and how quickly it devolves into little more than repeating the same few actions over and over until you get lucky enough or powered up enough (via the rouge-lite systems) to beat the boss. I think there are two major problems with the game that contributed to why I inevitably wrote this review.

Firstly, the new cards and abilities introduced throughout the game don’t do enough to spice up the gameplay. I changed up my strategies constantly throughout the game. Every time I got a new card I’d try to make a new deck that would work with it, but every time I ended up finding that whatever new card I got wasn’t impactful enough to really invest me back into the same gameplay loop I’d been playing for the past X number of hours. The same thing happened with the classes as well, but to a lesser extent. I think the classes were a fun change of pace, but could have been made a bit more impactful on the gameplay.

Secondly, I think the gear system is a major missed opportunity. When I first started playing I was looking through gear stats and evaluating whether or not I should swap or stay with my current gear, but by the end I was almost entirely just looking at the levels and colors of the gear I was equipping. Aside from a few specific builds (which never seemed to be worth the effort that needed to be put into them), swapping out gear whenever there was a higher number regardless of the stats was just as effective and wasted much less time than meticulously combing through the stat descriptions. So what was even the point of the gear? I think I would have vastly preferred less gear dropping from enemies, but with more impactful effects and bonuses, as that would have made me pay more attention to what I was equipping, rather than just throwing on whatever had the highest power number.

All things considered, I had a lot of fun for the first 5-10 hours when the game was still fresh and there was still the promise of more things to unlock, but with where I’m at in the game currently, there doesn’t seem to be much more the game has in store that could spice up the gameplay that I now find tedious. Even if Loop Hero does throw in a curveball somewhere later down the line, I honestly don’t know if I have the patience to work my way through to that point. If you think a good 5 to 10 hour chunk of fun gameplay with cool art is worth the admittedly quite cheap price tag, then by all means, don’t let me stop you from purchasing. Plus, if you get the game on sale like I did, then it’s really no big loss if you lose interest after the first couple bosses.

As a quick overview, I would absolutely recommend Vampire survivors. The game is simple, with a minimal control scheme and a singular goal of killing enemies, but with enough depth, progression, and choice that I've played the game for longer than I would have assumed it would have lasted, and I've still barely scratched the surface of the unlockables and achievements the game has to offer. Plus, with the incredibly low price of the game, you really don't have much of anything to lose by giving it a try, and they seem to be continually adding new stuff.

I really wanted to like this game, and there's a lot of positives going for it, but with the problems and bugs I encountered while playing I just can't recommend it to anyone in the game's current state, even with the super low price that the game charges.

Firstly, the positives. The base gameplay of Outside the Window is super fun and super addictive. The Tetris-esque stacking of buildings on top of one another and figuring out which blocks give point bonuses with other blocks is a fun and engaging gameplay loop. Additionally, the game's art style is really visually pleasing and makes for some really pretty screenshots, while at the same time the game's music really compliments both the gameplay and art style with its generally quite calming vibe.

However, the negatives make the aforementioned positives of the game hard to enjoy. Firstly, there seems to be a strange and generally quite unfair balance with what pieces you'll get in each wave of the game. Every few times you start the game, you'll likely just not get enough high point blocks or blocks with adjacency bonuses to even get past the first wave. This same aspect applies in the exact same way every time that you advance to the next tier of pieces, as they don't have adjacency bonuses with the previous tier of pieces, and so quite often I found myself losing at those parts of the game where I had no way to win simply due to the RNG of the pieces that I was given. Possibly even more annoying than the game's randomization is the fact that in my 1 hour playtime, I got softlocked 3 times. I'm unsure what causes it, but every once in a while I would just not get the option of placing more blocks. The options that would usually show up like "window" and "wall" just wouldn't appear, and I'd have to start my run all over again. Both of these factors combined meant that I had a lot of trouble playing the game past around 200 points.

In conclusion, if the softlocking bug was fixed, and the RNG was made a little more consistent or at least a little more forgiving at the very beginning of the game and at the beginning of each new tier, I would enjoy the game a whole lot more, and would recommend it without a second thought. The concept is great, but I think that just a few more tweaks are necessary.

This is a pretty short game, it only took me about 2 and a half hours to complete the main story and then go back to get all the achievements, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless, and for only 13 dollars at full price I think it's 100% worth a purchase if you're interested. Additionally, if you're like me and you thought those mobile games where you gobbed up random objects Katamari Damacy style looked super fun, but didn't want to be bombarded with mobile game ads, this game is basically a more polished and honestly much more fun iteration on that formula.

The one complaint that I do have is that I wish there was a way to turn off all the dialogue on subsequent playthroughs. I appreciated the story a lot and I feel it gave the gameplay a fun context, but if I've already completed the story and am going back to a previous level, I'd like the option to opt out of skipping through the textboxes to get to the gameplay, as I found that a bit tedious.

Overall I definitely recommend the game, and as I mentioned previously with such a low price tag I don't think there's any reason not to buy the game if you think you'd find it fun.

Project Winter is a super fun game you can play either with strangers or with a group of friends if you can get them all to buy it! I've got a fair bit of time in this game (53 hours at the time of review) and that's just from playing with a group of friends, I've never really tried playing with strangers.
The game's not crazy complicated so you can introduce friends to it pretty easily, but there's enough depth both in the mechanics and the mind games you can use to trick people that I never got bored of playing it. The cosmetic system is also super fun and you don't need to spend any money at all as long as you aren't trying to get literally every cosmetic or something crazy like that. I always appreciate a game that has a fun, free cosmetic system.
In conclusion, I would definitely recommend the game to anyone who enjoys similar "impostor" type multiplayer deception games. It's definitely a really excellent entry into the currently booming genre!