Recent reviews by Wulfyre

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Baby's First Horror game (and I do mean the best game to introduce a kid to Horror) has quite the gameplay and story that pretty much guarantees you'll miss lore during your first playthrough.


Part artsy, part Time Management sim, part RE4 Inventory Management sim, and full time fishing game, Dredge has its charms but given the way they're packaged into one bundle completing just the base game feels like eating one of those absurdly small meals that would fit into teaspoon at a high-end restaurant. Entirely because you need more than just the first playthrough to learn all the hidden stuff.




The fishing itself is reminiscent of DbD's skillchecks, with much lower stakes. Your reward for beating one of these not so quick time events is a fish, material, or treasure, that depending on your inventory space and management will either fit or force you to throw it or another item in your cargo away.
It would be repetitive, except that the fish and loot you pick up from each spot have unique designs that show emotion ranging from comical to grotesque. The designs of the fish may make you chuckle or even for just a moment recoil at their concepts existing.
Once again, this is a fishing game, but the art style brings an appeal that no "pro bass shop fishing sim 132" could ever mimic.




The inventory is based on your current ship's cargo size, and you can both upgrade it and lose many things from it if you're not careful. Like RE4's inventory system, you have a limited amount of space, and what you have affects if you bring loot back now or later; or if you bring it back at all.
The actual mechanics of this game change how your inventory works; certain tools require certain areas of the cargo, and if you get damaged, you can lose loot, your ability to fish, or even your ability to sail away.
Annoying, but hardly a problem, if it wasn't for the fact that you could lose side quest items, because there isn't a system to prevent their loss. Which would be nice, except some of the side quest stuff isn't marked as side quest stuff, and can be literally sold.
Cool in concept, not so much in practice. The way they set up the autosave (the only save) system means that if you lose an object overboard, your only way to get it back is to die before you dock; break your ship and find an enemy to kill you.




The time management system is a day night cycle, and doesn't affect the difficulty as the game goes on so much as it affects the environment around you by day or by night. Which is to say, there isn't nearly any variation as you might hope or expect. There seems to be a somewhat existing weather system, but there's nothing special like "daytime isn't safe" or anything. It becomes repetitive quickly.


The panic system is affected by 3 things; Time, Light, and Hazards. You can go the entire game without ever actually getting a high panic level, and that can mean never interacting with a ton of hidden stuff in the game. Lore is locked behind panic, enemies are locked behind panic, and even fish can be more likely to be found behind panic. Don't get panicked, and you don't get access. If you want to enjoy the game, don't be afraid of a little panic.




The lore and worldbuilding is well, lovecraftian.
It has the token lovecraft quaint location with dark backstory and horrors that you can peep.
Of course, everytime you try to find out what the horrors are, the NPCs go "No don't peep the horrors" and then give you a quest so that they can peep the horrors instead. And after they peep the horrors, you talk to them and they react as if they peeped the horror.
This would be cool, if it didn't happen in more than one quest/sidequest. There's one outlier at the 4th main quest piece location, but he seems to be the exception.
Most horrors throughout the plot have a very circular logic of "I enter horror's area, it can attack me here, i outsmart it, rinse, repeat.
Fun the first few times, and now they're more just temporary annoyances. The first playthrough, the story is in your face and you won't understand whats going on until you actually play to first ending... At which point, you'll likely end up googling to see "what all that was about,"
When you find out about the hidden stuff, you'll do a second playthrough just to find the missed content and then realize all the foreshadowing that was there for the first ending.
There are minor puzzles that imply themselves into the main story, except they feel entirely disconnected until you learn about some hidden lore.




The art style is the absolute best part of the game, and tying the entire game together and leading to clarity issues.
The fish art is amazing, and the variation on same types of fish makes it amusing or mildly disgusting when you catch an interesting fish.
Both the 3d world and 2d art blend together to create a seamless atmosphere where no mechanics or game play feel out of place.
The only problem comes around with item clarity during some quests, where items used in side quests may not be marked as quest items. This can be disappointing when the item you need to finish a quest is one you either discarded or sold, or opposingly assumed was a quest item because of the description.




If you like to speedrun, this game can be done very quickly.The main storyline is *very linear.*


If you don't enjoy sightseeing and cruising around, this game is a no go. A lot of the quality is in the art, and hidden stuff that requires certain criteria.


If you don't like repetitive gameplay, this isn't the game for you. It's a fishing game, and the horror chases are very similar with a little variation. There are gimmicks, but there's only like one permanent solution to any horrors throughout the game. Much of the content is fishing for different types of fish. The world is very small.


The replayability factor is two playthroughs and you're done. Finish the game once, google what you missed, 100% the second playthrough with the other ending, maybe see the secret stuff. 100 hours max, could literally be done in less than a real life day if you're really picky about it.


If you don't enjoy taking risks, this game isn't for you. Content is literally hidden, behind the panic system. If you don't take any risks, you won't see more than half of the real story. You'll also miss hidden lore locked behind the panic system. Keep yourself sane, and you'll never find out what secrets the world holds. This is after all, a lovecraftian horror game.


If these are dealbreakers, you won't want this game.

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The one thing that kept me coming back was the art style. If you've ever seen the episode of Spongebob where King Neptune cooks a thousand patties and Spongebob cooks one, then this is that one. There's not much content, but each part of the game connects seamlessly, complements itself, and creates such a well done atmosphere it almost forces you to relax before the next spooky part of the game hits. Almost, except for the lack of solid meat to the game.




My disappointment is that there isn't more to the story, especially at the price of the game. At a base of $25 the only comparable game is Outer Wilds, but the linearity of the world disappoints because, I don't feel like I was the captain of the ship; just along for the cruise. This game has the framework to be great, but it needs a lot more flesh before you can make a meal out of it.

This game is very nice. Great combat system, gameplay loop, day night cycle, crafting system, but there are some glaring issues with the normal settings being very clearly balanced for multiplayer and not for singleplayer. It's not a coincidence the popular reviews all tell you to modify your game settings to enjoy the game.

Also, as nice as the world is, it's disappointing that lategame you end up with regions that are the only place you can pick up certain resources. Silkworms, Silver, Gold Jewelry, all fall into this "you have to go to this one specific spot to get it and nowhere else" and that makes farming for needed items tedious on a normal playthrough with unmodified settings.

If you want to just enjoy a quick and easy singleplayer playthrough, here's my recommendations on setting modifiers.

1st page:
Rift Incursion interval to 30 minutes, Rift duration both minor and major to 30 minutes. Hustling to the next rift to farm shards was a nightmare lategame, especially because you kinda had to with only a 20 minute timer and 6 of the events with like 250~350 shards per event.

Blood bound equipment to ON, Teleport bound items OFF so you don't have to walk back everywhere, bat bound items OFF and same with soul shards.

2nd page:
Crank inventory stacks up to 3x. If you're farming anything at all, you'll be running out of inventory space all the time.
Loot multiplier to 1.25 bare minimum. 2x iif you're looking to just enjoy the game without grinding your ass off.
Servant hunt to 2~3x. At base, a single servant hunt for 2h will give you 30% of what you could pick up yourself in one single trip, or 90% with max bonuses and a 24 hour long hunt. Either way, if my servant is gonna take a longer time than me to do literally anything, it better be worth the time put into it.
Material yield multiplier anywhere from 1.5x~3x.
You can leave blood essence alone, but if you're lazy kick it up to 1.5x.

Durability loss multiplier should be set to 0.5 or lower. Brutal difficulty will already set it to 0.5, and repair costs are a balancing act in normal difficulty without any modifiers anyways.
Health multiplier is for your armor. Depending on whether you change durability loss you can either leave this alone or crank it up to max.
Resource Yield should be set to the same modifier as Material yield.
Don't touch spell/physical damage modifiers. If you want an easier challenge, play on easy. Those difficulties will balance enemy health and damage for you.

Stock multiplier to 1.5x. Items that only have 2 in stock will now have 3. 8 in stock turns into 12.
Price multiplier to 0.8x. There are some expensive things out there that aren't worth as much as they cost.
Restock time to 0.5x Normal restock time is 1 hour, this sets it to 30 minutes and happens to coincide with the same timer as the Rift Incursions.

Page 3:
This is the pvp page. Only use this if doing multiplayer, but i'm skipping this because i'm setting up a singleplayer preset.

Page 4:
Castle height limit 6.
Territory limit to 800 at all tiers.
Servant limit should still scale.
Level 1 servants = 6
Level 2 = 8 servants
Level 3 = 10 servants
Level 4 = 14 servants
Level 5 = 20 servants.

As for Prison cells, I recommend only 8~10. There are "10" possible blood types, of which one is the worst and 3 you cannot contain. This leaves 6 for you to drain blood from, 1 incase a blood type doesnt have 100% (you can keep 2 of the same profession and gamble to level one up to 100%) and 1 open for teleporting a prisoner and then turning it into a servant. If you don't feel like micromanaging your prisoners, max it out at 50 (there is no reason you need that many prisoners).

Build cost can either be 0.25x or 1x, depending on how much you think you need to grind. This isn't minecraft, so 1 block does not equal 1 block.
Do not change crafting cost, if you've already changed the loot drop rate like before. These are balanced around certain amounts, and crafting/floor&room bonuses will already modify items like these.
Crafting, Refinement, and Servant Convert rate should all be set to 6. You have no reason to be waiting 3 minutes for a tool to finish crafting.

You can ignore Page 5.

Congrats! You're now ready for a lower stakes playthrough in which you don't have to micromanage your resources so that you're grinding constantly just so you can either repair your gear/get the next tier of upgrades. Equivalently, you're also not so limited by resources that you can't afford to equip your servants, and also that your servants are worth investing resources into, and that you can continuously play without having bumps of "hey i have to wait for a resource to regenerate before I can really do anything here" like the base settings of the game are set.

A roguelite run&gun shooter with barebones at the time content, with extreme potential and gratifying gameplay.

Multiple characters with different paths and options make the gameplay variable on the micro level, regardless of difficulty.

Enemy diversity needs work and multiple options, and options for upgrades and weaponry are promising but slightly lacking.

Given early access content, this is still well above the level expected for this style of game.

If you liked Enter the Gungeon, Risk of Rain 1 and 2, and other roguelites, you'll love 20MTD.

9/10.

Great story, puzzles that given enough time anyone can figure out, and an amazing atmosphere for multiple atmospheres.

gamning

many hours

short time owned

very good

I won a game against the beginner bot but i am irreversibly scarred

11/7 need to get a friend to get this game so they can transcend their mental limits

it is good

Early Access. Buggy. Glitches galore.

Great SyFy Ghost Hunter style video game with hints of Amnesia the Dark Descent in regards to sanity meter. Very much a detective game. Eats time up rapidly. Can easily spend half an hour or more for one mission.

Played this game quite a bit, great modding scene. Expect quite a bit from Journey's End update.