🍒 Lilly (🌸◠‿◠) tarafından yazılan son incelemeler

Cook Serve Forever is more of a spin-off rather than a sequel to the famous Cook, Serve, Delicious! games developed by the same studio. It preserves the theme and the core mechanics from the previous games, but it takes the gameplay into a slightly different direction with the addition of a solid narrative approach and a brand new visual scheme, while also transitioning towards a rhythm-based game.

At the moment of writing this review, the game is in Early Access, but the content available is already fully playable and bug-free. As of October 2023, a prologue and two chapters have been released, totaling around 5 hours of gameplay, and another two chapters are planned to be added in the future. In comparison to the series, mastering cooking recipes is not the central focus anymore, and the gameplay is considerably simplified. Fulfilling orders is now done by correctly inputting QTE sequences and thus building up a combo score by pressing the arrow buttons as indicated on the screen, with some of the elements having extra modifiers to make the gameplay not so trivial. You’ll have to alternate simple key presses with longer ones, simultaneously press a specific combination of keys, remember your last key pressed, and twist your brain for those annoying “NOT” modifiers that are randomly added to some of the keys in the ingredient sequence (such as “NOT arrow down”).

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3055290200
One day consists of multiple shifts, and in between these shifts, you can choose one of three possible upgrades that will influence the difficulty of the dishes you’ll get to prepare for the rest of the day. The more difficult the chosen upgrade (for example, playing the rest of the day with three ingredients upgraded to the maximum difficulty), the more XP you earn for that location. Leveling up a location will also increase the difficulty of the QTE sequences needed to cook the dishes available at that location, which in turn will also gradually tighten the reaction times, making it harder for the player to successfully complete one day. What’s nice in all this is that the player has the flexibility of choosing how difficult the gameplay should be, as some of the upgrades you can choose in-between shifts do not add any challenge factors although opting in for one of these will make you miss out on the XP you would otherwise get.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3055290288
Some might take this as a rather simplistic and repetitive gameplay loop, and while it’s certainly a correct statement, it’s also true that the outstanding soundtrack played during the levels turns it into a very enjoyable and addictive experience. A set of great indie tracks accompany the player while fulfilling orders and a rhythm-based approach could borderline be adopted while pressing the keys needed to cook a dish, although this is entirely optional. The narrative bits that pop up between or even during levels are also a great motivator for the player to keep coming back to the game to explore more of its story. The game follows the journey of a young and passionate cook who decides to take a leap of faith in her life and move with her partner to another city to enter a major cooking competition and find a job at a restaurant run by a renowned chef, her role-model in the art of cooking. All characters and dialogues are also wonderfully voice-acted.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3055290706
All-in-all, Cook Serve Forever is meant as a relaxing, arcade experience in the vein of Cook, Serve, Delicious! games, although it should not be taken as a sequel to the series, as it wasn’t developed with this idea in mind. While it shares some common aspects and mechanics with the aforementioned games, Cook Serve Forever is substantially different and considerably simplified. I could even say that it’s targeted more at casual players rather than at the veterans of the series because it doesn’t encourage the frantic and quite hectic button mashing which is the series’ staple mechanic. It’s fairly grindy if you want to maximize everything and get 100% achievements, yet I find it a very enjoyable grind because of the excellent soundtrack and overall presentation.

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Lakeburg Legacies is an original blend between a social simulator and a resource management simulator. Half of the time will be focused on expanding the little town of Lakeburg with new buildings and balancing out their resource production and consumption, while the other half will be spent matchmaking single people and managing the relationships between townsfolk. Think of it as a much lighter version of Crusader Kings games, but instead of conquering other territories and instating new rulers there, you’ll build various production buildings and assign suitable workers from the existing inhabitants.

The game has a hefty set of mechanics, and there are a lot of stats to keep track of, both in regards to the resources managed, as well as various traits that the people have. Luckily, the UI is great at showing the player everything they need to know in the blink of an eye and is specifically designed to facilitate quick navigation between various information categories, while also providing some very useful filters to narrow down essential information such as which person is best for a certain workplace, their proficiency for a certain job type, their career aspirations, relationships with fellow townsfolk, etc. The tutorial is equally well done and it explains all the mechanics in detail, as they are gradually introduced.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3022746578
Every time you’ll want to find a suitor for someone, the old witch Tindra (funny name pun) will guide you through a minigame. Each person has a specific set of three likes and three dislikes, therefore you’d want to pair them with someone who shares at least one or two common likes / dislikes. This is done by declining the proposed candidates (which are randomly generated) until you find one that appears to be at least a good match if not an excellent one. The second stage of the minigame consists in choosing the correct topic of conversation out of two possible choices, based on the other person’s likes or dislikes. The couple goes on three dates, therefore you will have three opportunities of choosing the right answer. This will eventually decide how compatible the two people are and how stable their love life will be (more correct answers mean a better relationship for the couple). The gimmick here is that you don’t have access to the sets of likes or dislikes of the pair when confronted with one of these choices, and this is probably done so that you can have some variety or drama regarding the couple’s lives. Same-sex marriages are allowed, and before attempting to find a partner for someone there’s a choice between finding a suitor among men, women, or mixed genders. This minigame is quite fun for the first 10 times you play it, but when you have a big population, it becomes extremely repetitive and redundant.

The town population increases either by recruiting a new person (available only at specific times), wedding an inhabitant to someone outside of Lakeburg (thus making the other person move in), or by waiting until a couple produces offspring which eventually will grow up into adults and continue the cycle. Randomly generated events occur not only in the game world, but also in each household, increasing or decreasing the couple’s bond. Each couple (including the same-sex ones) also has a certain desire for kids, and depending how eager they are to do so, you’ll need to make sure that these kids have enough space in the household by unlocking extra rooms. It’s nice that the children inherit not only Traits (attributes) from their parents but also visual details (hair, skin color, face type) from them, making them look more like their actual children rather than yet another NPC with randomly generated features.


https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3022746113
Each resident has a set of strengths that make them more suitable for certain jobs than others, but they also have career targets or specific job preferences. The production rate of the buildings depends on the workers assigned (how competent they are for that position), but you can also spend gold on increasing the efficiency, improving the working conditions or expanding them to produce several resources instead of one. The relationships between villagers will also affect their work ambiance, so you will want to allocate people to production buildings not only based on their proficiency but also based on the relationships between potential co-workers. Additionally, each worker can take one or more children as their apprentice, increasing their proficiency for that respective job.

The building aspect of the game is rather rigid. You can’t build multiple buildings of the same type, and the buildings that you can create are unlocked sequentially. Once you have enough resources to build the next building from one of the three category chains (primary resource generation, industry / production buildings, public services buildings), you will be able to buy it and start assigning workers to it. Unfortunately, each playthrough will end up looking the same, because the placement of the buildings is predefined and automatic - the player will not be able to choose the layout of their town.

The game is heavily customizable regarding its length (you can choose between playing a short, a medium and a long game, with an additional endless mode recently added based on popular request) and difficulty (various sliders to adjust the economy and penalties are available). Depending on how successful you are (prestige gained), at the end, you will be credited a certain amount of diamonds that you can then spend to unlock some extra backgrounds / images in a separate collection, unrelated to the game. A short game (30 years) on the easiest difficulty took me roughly six hours to complete, and I was then able to unlock one out of the 33 available backgrounds. While the game is enjoyable enough if you don't mind its repetitiveness, I don’t think that these images provide a strong enough motivation for me to spend another ~150h in repeated playthroughs of essentially the same thing. The achievements are also quite grindy, partially oriented toward accomplishing certain milestones in one playthrough (requiring pretty much playing the more lengthy ones), partially based on RNG.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3022721402
Lakeburg Legacies is a decent game with some very well-tuned mechanics, but I do feel that it lacks a certain spark to keep most players interested in it long-term. It's certainly nice to finish one playthrough or two, but the incentive to play beyond that is rather lacking. If you find it fun to create your own little drama in a small town by role-playing God and matchmaking or breaking up couples, forcing them to have children or on the contrary to be abstinent, marrying a priest to a pleasure house worker, enhancing the adultery or lustful traits or organizing coup d'etats, while also micromanaging your economy and resource production to afford all of the above, then this is certainly a game for you.

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🌸 Website[lillycorner.com]

Soul Delivery is a short and adorable story-rich 2D adventure that is in some aspects reminiscent of Cloudpunk. Although the two games are essentially very distinct, belong to different genres and have a notable quality gap between them, they do share a similar cyberpunk-futuristic environment with a city of neon lights, robots and human-electronic networks serving as their setting, and both stories revolve around the idea of fulfilling one or more deliveries.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3019588939
Soul Delivery plays as a side-scroller adventure in which you can have ample dialogues with the NPCs, complete fetch quests by picking up objects from the game world and then delivering them to their respective NPCs, or explore its wonderful universe to gather a few collectibles.

The game is delivered in chapter-size chunks of an hour each. Currently available to play are only the first two chapters (taking around 1.5h - 2h to complete if the dialogues are not skipped). A third chapter is planned to be released in the future as a paid DLC. The chapters are non-linear and so far they have rather unrelated stories, but these will likely be linked together in the upcoming chapter which will hopefully also provide a conclusion to the story.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3019588963
Soul Delivery is a one-man project, thus the game is not perfect. I haven’t encountered any game-breaking bugs, but some smaller edge areas can appear unfinished (nothing too bothersome though). The conversations often have different branches consistent with the choices picked, but they ultimately don’t have any effect on the game progression or any impact on the story. The (solo) developer freely admits that English is not their native language, and there are some awkward sentences and a couple of typos. Although still fully intelligible, the second chapter especially requires some intensive proofreading. The collectibles are also not yet implemented for this chapter. One could say that it is still a work in progress and an Early Access tag would be more appropriate, yet at the moment the game isn’t marked as such.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3019589055
Soul Delivery is a very cute and enjoyable experience and the current issues are rather minor. However, it’s very unfortunate that buyers of the full game are left with a cliffhanger (because only the first two chapters are provided) and that experiencing the full story will require additional expenses. It would also be great if Steam achievements were implemented in the future.

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🌸 Website[lillycorner.com]

I really love how simple and yet addictive So Much Stuff is. Essentially, it’s a non-narrative hidden object game (there is no story or any kind of narration), perhaps better described as a collection of mini-games. These are split into eighteen chapters of four puzzles each, with an additional eight chapters for the Collector’s Edition, totaling a bit over 100 individual levels to solve.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3018504160
Each chapter has a unique theme and the levels included contain only images / items belonging to that theme. They’re quite varied, ranging from food-related themes (vegetable garden, kitchen, candy shop) to cultural ones (Ancient Japan, Greece, China, Old Mexico, Nepal, etc.), but also all sorts of other crafts such as sewing, clock working, painting, etc.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3018504124
The mini-games you can encounter are:

• Sort / Pairs - my personal favorite. The player is presented with a scene in which dozens of objects are messily thrown on top of each other, and the gameplay consists in identifying pairs of identical items to remove them from the scene. The objects are strategically arranged to not make their location extremely obvious from the start. What I love the most about it (besides the obviously beautiful graphics) is the deeply OCD-satisfying feeling of cleaning a place or rather making order in a clutter of objects, one step at a time.
  
• Hidden object scenes - where you need to sequentially identify multiple objects of one type based on the name given.
  
• Jigsaw puzzles - with non-standard piece shapes and cuts
  
• Swap mini-games - where you swap tiles to form an image; like in the jigsaw levels, these also have peculiar shapes and cuts.
  
• Differences - find the differences between two pictures.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3018504101
The game can be completed in roughly 6 hours and there are no missable achievements. Some levels have collectibles split into multiple fragments, hidden behind the objects displayed in the level, but they are easy to gather as long as you clean up a level fully. So Much Stuff is overall a really relaxing and enjoyable game.

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🌸 Website[lillycorner.com]

Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara is set in the same universe as Stories of Mara and Summer in Mara. While the three games belong to different genres and can be played independently of each other, they share a common set of characters and the same setting. Being a rather challenging action-platformer game, Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara brings new energy to the trilogy, which is otherwise oriented more towards casual players.

You will reprise once more your role as young Koa whose help and assistance are required in a little town plundered by pirates. They looted all available goods to enhance the obstacle courses that they built for entertainment. Koa will be tasked not only to retrieve these goods but also to test all these trials and compete in all races.

The game is built linearly, with a new area made accessible only after you complete all the trials from the previous one. These are also unlocked sequentially, ending in a boss fight or a notably harder level after you complete the three or four stages included in that area’s batch. Each of these levels has set timers that award gold, silver and respectively bronze medals for speed-running, but they can also be completed in a leisurely manner, allowing you to take your time to explore and collect every little shell (the main currency used in-game). Aside from shells, each level also has between one and three collectibles that you can gather which, in combination with the shells, allow you to purchase cosmetics for your character, boat or rebuild the town. There is no option to upgrade your abilities in any way (aside from some minor boat upgrades), therefore gathering all these is entirely optional.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3010735098
Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara contains a very varied set of levels, both in terms of biomes used (ice, lava, temple, hills, water), but also regarding to the mechanics. Some are parkour levels, others involve swimming underwater. Some boss fights take the form of competing with the boss in a race to reach the finish gate first, while others will require you to directly fight the boss and fend off their attacks. Each of these levels is pretty unique in its own way and new mechanics are introduced every two or three levels.

The controls are well-implemented and responsive. Instead of double jumping (which doesn't exist here), most of your time will be spent alternating your jump with a roll which has to be timed exactly when Koa lands from her jump. This makes her advance very fast (walking is extremely slow otherwise) but it also means that you will need an increased level of precision and pre-planning to perfectly chain these together so that you land on stable ground and not somewhere in the void between two platforms. It becomes like a fast-paced, yet rhythmic dance that you have to interrupt every so often to overcome traps or other obstacles and ultimately an exercise in alternating quickly between the adrenaline rush of the speed and tempering yourself to not mess up the jumps.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3010735067
On the other hand, I had real problems with the camera perspective. The game uses a static camera that follows the main character’s movement, but it switches perspectives rather unexpectedly and this caught me off-guard many times. Aside from keeping up with the fast movement of the character, my mind also had to continuously (and quickly) re-adjust to the new perspective. There is no way for the player to control the camera themselves. Additionally, some levels contain a chase sequence in which the camera moves at a set speed and with a set orientation. If you don’t keep up with it, you lose the level by not being in the frame anymore.

Regarding the difficulty, I’d say that the levels range from moderate to high-intensity exercises (or at least above average), culminating with a rather brutal end-boss. Even if the game can be played in a non-speedrun mode, the chase sequences can seem really tight and frustrating for new players, and there is also a considerable amount of precision jumps, timed jumps and sequences in which you have to carry an object without being hit by anything. On the positive side, the levels are split into different stages, with checkpoints in-between, and reaching a checkpoint will replenish your lives back to the maximum of three. Also nice is the fact that you won’t lose the items collected if you die, neither the coins / door keys picked up from the beginning of the level, nor the collectibles. The game offers two difficulty modes, with the difference between them being the number of checkpoints encountered in a level.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3010734894
Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara is certainly a well-made game, even though it doesn’t add anything new to the genre. Completing one playthrough takes around six hours if done in a relaxed way (or four hours in a more rushed way), but if you aim to obtain 100% completion it will take you several more hours. For this, you’ll need to obtain all gold medals, win in all races against the NPCs and buy everything from all the shops which essentially means gathering every collectible. Due to its classic 3D platformer style, Koa and the Five Pirates of Mara can definitely scratch that itch if you’re nostalgic for games like Nintendo’s Super Mario 64, PlayStation’s Crash Bandicoot, A Hat In Time and it’s perhaps most similar to Kao the Kangaroo.

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🌸 Website[lillycorner.com]

Delivery Kore is a casual exploration / creature collector game with very sweet graphics and very relaxed gameplay. The game is not in Early Access, yet the current content, mechanics and overall development state is more suitable for an early access phase rather than a full release. Although entirely playable, there is still a big amount of technical issues that can heavily decrease your enjoyment, and the actual content / storyline is also rather thin.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006876719
In Delivery Kore you step into the shoes of a young girl tasked to help the spirits that spawn in a magical forest reincarnate into new beings. Getting in the proximity of one of these spirits will allow you to see on the top left corner of the screen which three components of the forest it needs to reach maturity and to be ready for its reincarnation. You will be picking the spirit up and carrying it with you until you find all three elements, then you imbue the spirit with the elements' energy and eventually drop it (when it’s ready) through a magical portal to the real world. These three elements are specific for each spirit and are usually a combination of flowers or other souls inhabiting the forest.

Which of these elements spawn depends on the weather (rain, fog, sunny, etc.) or the time of day (day / night time), but all this information can be easily consulted in a compendium that is accessible anytime from the character menu, allowing you to preplan your actions. A minimap will also show you representative icons for the elements you need to collect, making it quite easy for you to spot and find them. Also fun is when multiple spirits are combined into a bigger one that inherits the properties of all the constituent spirits and you'll end up carrying a giant turnip on your head all around the forest.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006876862
Delivery Kore is developed by a Korean studio, and there are still a couple of buttons / text snippets that were missed when the Korean-to-English translation was implemented. Aside from these, while the game is playable both with a controller and a mouse & keyboard, switching between these two while in-game completely breaks the menus, rendering buttons not clickable and making different UI panels overlap. As long as you don’t change your control scheme, you will encounter only some minor issues such as the soul sprites not being animated and some clipping of the wall tiles when you jump.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3006877011
The game loop is fairly repetitive and the quests are rather ordinary (usually asking you to release a certain amount of souls into the world, or to create a specific type of spirit). However, the developers are actively working on improving the game and adding more entertaining quests, as well as fixing the current technical issues. Overall, I think Delivery Kore has a lot of potential and could very well evolve into a beautiful and stable product, but for that to happen it would need to spend some more time in the oven. If you’re interested in the game, my advice would be to pick it up during a sale or wait a few more months until it ripens up.

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🌸 Website[lillycorner.com]

Watchers of the Universe: I'm outta here! is a graphical first-person adventure game with static scenes. Unlike in other point-and-click games in which you use the mouse to control your character, here you won’t even see your character (because a first-person perspective is used), and clicking on various parts of a scene will either move you to a different location, will have you interact with certain items or characters or discover some hidden objects that usually unlock entries in the lore compendium.

The universe of WOTU is based on Zecharia Sitchin’s books[en.wikipedia.org]. He is known for his theories about humankind’s cultural foundation being tied to or influenced by an extraterrestrial race named the Anunnaki. WOTU’s storyline takes place on Nibiru - the planet inhabited by the Anunnaki - and revolves around a commoner trying to gather enough motivation to become a Watcher, or simply put, someone who discards their emotions to strictly follow instructions without questioning them, somewhat akin to a soldier.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3000044741
The game doesn’t dive too much into what a Watcher is or how someone becomes one, but it does have a pretty good chunk of lore based on Zecharia Sitchin’s work. The game successfully manages to convey a mysterious, exotic and alien ambiance, while also making the player feel that the Anunnaki aren’t that much different from regular humans. Just like many of us, the protagonist struggles with financial issues, tries to find ways to get hired so he can pay his rent and ultimately he aims to follow his dream.

The delivery of the story is good. It’s usually done through ample dialogues with the other characters (all linear, without any choices) or through the thoughts that the main character expresses when interacting with various objects in the world. However, the best part of the game lies in its gorgeous artwork. Featuring more than 35 static backgrounds (my rough guess, I didn’t count them), all hand-drawn with vivid colors and lots of details, representing a unique architectural style reminiscent of our ancient cultures (Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian), each CG is a true delight.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3000044045
While I did enjoy exploring WOTU’s world, I do have one subjective criticism about the gameplay, and that is essentially the lack of guidance for the player. This can be seen in multiple aspects. For instance, the puzzles (or rather *what* items to use *where*) are not always intuitive. A lot of time is spent in pixel hunting, not only for the hidden objects but also for the things you can pick up and the items you can interact with. These are not marked in any way on the screen (for instance, there’s no cursor change on hover), there’s no hotspot map and no hint option. There are also no chat logs that you might want to reread if you pause your gameplay for a lengthy period (hours / days), causing you to forget where you were and what you were supposed to do. You’re left alone in front of the screen with your poor mouse that will suffer the wrath of thousands of clicks only so that you can progress one step further.

While the game can be finished in less than one hour if you know where to go and what to do, this whole focus on pixel hunting for my next action quite ruined my enjoyment. To be fully honest, I couldn’t have finished the game without the help of the dev, who was kind enough to give me a hint about the location in which I missed something. Turns out that the item I didn’t pick up was just a few pixels wide, barely visible, and not finding it cost me more than one hour and a half of clicking every little thing in all the available locations. Out of curiosity, I revisited the game for a second time after I finished my first playthrough. Telling myself that I already know all its secrets, I thought I’d go through it one more time so I can experience a better continuity of the story; turns out that I was wrong and I ended up spending yet again one hour of clicking everything because I wasn’t able to find the element to progress further or what I had done for that in my first playthrough.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3000044659
To sum up, I think the game is ok as long as you don’t mind the lack of hand-holding. I like that the collectible items are very nicely hidden in a scene (they blend perfectly with the background, actually being an integral part of the scenes), but I would love to have more indications about what I am expected to do so that I don’t waste that much time stabbing in the dark.

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🌸 Website[lillycorner.com]

Important:
DO NOT read the detailed description on the store page,
it spoils EVERYTHING about the story.

Daydream: Forgotten Sorrow is a puzzle platformer that likely attracts players due to its great presentation. As someone who loves atmospheric platformers, I was also drawn to it not only because of the beautiful visuals but also because of the theme that made me think it would be a very enjoyable and casual experience. What can even go wrong when you have a mix of colorful environments, the journey of a boy and his teddy bear and a seemingly wholesome storyline? Well… much more than I expected. I tried really hard to like the game, but the number of issues this game has strongly impacted my immersion in a deeply negative way, to the point where I ended up feeling as much hate towards it as my initial excitement was.

Let’s start with the positives: visuals and ambiance. The whole game world defies physics and reality, essentially looking like a figment of young Griffin’s imagination. Since Daydream is played from the perspective of a child (Griffin), everything looks bigger and scarier. There are friendly toys, green fields, floating castles and colorful trains, but also eerie elements like shadows on the walls, evil spiders, dark goo and a creepy hand that tries to grab him sometimes. The game does a really good job of depicting the wonderful creativity of a young and innocent mind, and the mix of emotions that he experiences. Daydream: Forgotten Sorrow gives a strong Little Nightmares vibe, although less creepy and disturbing. It is dark to some extent, but being rather mild on the horror scale (close to no horror at all), it can also be played by those that dislike scary games.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2997961522
Now, onto the negatives:

• Controls: not the best. The environments contain a lot of climbable objects that are not noticeably different from the background objects. Exploring means bumping into all the objects in a room, but bumping into a climbable object will automatically make you climb it. That was probably implemented to ease up the platforming sequences, but in practice first entering a room and trying to understand where you can go and what you can do becomes extremely frustrating. Plus, there are no indicators of whether an object is climbable or not.
  
• Camera: absolutely horrible. This is a 3D game, with a 2D perspective. This means that you have a side view (just like in any side-scroller), but instead of moving only left and right, you can also move in depth. Now, imagine platforming like this, when you can’t really see the width of your platform (because of the fixed camera), or if the objects next to your platform belong to the same layer (thus allowing you to jump on them) or to a layer located forwards or behind the one you’re on (thus resulting in a failed jump).
  
• Single-payer co-op mode? The game seems to be distinctly designed for two players (one controlling the boy, the other one controlling the teddy bear). But because this is not currently implemented, the player has to perform actions for both characters at the same time. Holding one side of the controller for the boy and the other side for the teddy bear just doesn’t feel natural.
  
• Inconsistencies: sometimes your teddy bear somehow manages to jump pretty high, other times you have to pick him up and throw him on a platform located above your head. Sometimes he nicely follows you, other times he’s just… nowhere.
  
• Interacting with objects: frustrating. The teddy bear is in your way most of the time when you want to pick up an object, resulting in you picking him up instead. When one object requires a two-character interaction (for example, pushing a cart where the boy takes one side, and the teddy bear the other side) it’s pretty difficult to make the other character actually engage in that action. They either don’t listen to your commands, or the prompt to give them a command is missing.
  
• Jumping down from platforms rather close to the floor causes death. Generally, if there’s a ladder next to a platform, then jumping down from it instead of using the ladder will result in death. This is also encountered in unnecessary cases when the platforms are close to ground level.
  
• Animation speed: too slow. Recovering after a death takes several seconds, and this is too long considering that you die a lot.
  
• Bugs / glitches: lots, and of all sorts. The game sometimes doesn’t register that you are crawling, and then you die. Other times it doesn’t register your commands, and then you die. It also happens that the other character glitches badly (for example, when they need to throw an item, 80% of the time this fails and the item respawns somewhere else, making you redo the whole puzzle loop). Aside from these, there are also visual glitches and rendering issues.
  
• Story: until the very end, there’s no explanation about why you are doing what you do (unless you read the Store page, which spoils everything). The game starts abruptly with the boy and teddy bear running away from an evil force and you just keep going forwards, linearly exploring various rooms or biomes, without an apparent purpose. The ending is also pretty enigmatic and doesn’t actually answer the *why* and *how* that you’ve been asking yourself all along.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2997961487
A lot of reviews mention that this is an easy game. Personally, I found it quite difficult, partly because of the extra repeats needed to overcome the bugs, but also because of the level design. There are several timed sequences (when some entity chases Griffin), and others with tight jumps and precision movement. Learning them is done through trial and error because the game doesn’t tell you in advance what to expect. Luckily you encounter checkpoints quite often, and lengthier sequences contain at least two or three checkpoints. Therefore, while the gameplay is above casual difficulty, the game is overall quite forgiving, allowing the player to repeat only a short sequence to get back to the point they were before they died. On the other hand, if some puzzle is contained in this short sequence, the whole puzzle has to be solved again, which uselessly wastes time.

The puzzles are largely ok, neither too easy nor too difficult, none of them being out of the ordinary. There are two puzzles in which you have to find the correct order of activating levers / the right combination, yet no indication is given to the player about how to solve it.

The game also features 14 achievements, thankfully none requiring speedruns, zero-death runs, or solving puzzles from the first try. They are all awarded for finding 14 collectibles that aren't missable in the sense that you can always revisit a previously completed chapter from the chapter selection menu.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2997961299
Daydream: Forgotten Sorrow is a short game that can be completed in two to three hours, or around five hours if you’re a slowpoke like me. The rest of the time I spent in the game (almost four hours, which is half my playtime) was wasted on redoing platforming sequences over and over again, due to the various issues listed above. The game has a lot of potential, but unfortunately in its current state, it was a disappointing experience.

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I Made Myself An AI is a pretty solid puzzle game with a rather unique concept. The objective in every level is to charge a power source (socket) by placing generators on the given grid and connecting them to the power source through conductors. The generators overheat unless cooled down with fans, which have to be placed either immediately next to a generator, or connected to a generator through heat conductors to disperse the heat. Essentially I Made Myself An AI is a game about building electrical circuits, while also managing the thermodynamics of your configuration.

Placing each element on the grid costs you a certain amount of coins and while you’re not limited in what elements you use or how you arrange them, your configuration will be restricted by the maximum amount of coins that you can spend in a level. There are a few other additional mechanics that slightly change the gameplay by adding placement rules for some elements. For instance, fans can be placed only at the outside edge of the grid, which means that you will have to take into consideration the length of the conductors that link a generator to the power source or its fans. Later on, new elements with specific requirements will be introduced, making the levels more complex.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2995305503
One thing that I liked about the game (aside from the innovative concept) was the fact that it’s not very restrictive in how you need to build your configuration to reach a solution. It’s not one of those “find the developer’s solution” games. It allows you a certain amount of flexibility in placing the elements by giving you a few more coins than what a strict optimal solution would otherwise require. That doesn’t mean that you should not optimize your configurations - on the contrary, part of the gameplay is adjusting your current configuration and improving it to save a few coins so you can use them to build one extra fan for example, for better cooling of your circuits.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2995305604
This is encountered especially in later levels, which contain multiple stages (2-4 stages). Some of these levels can seem quite big, but they’re approached step by step, and sequentially solved. They’re split into separate stages, each having a limited amount of coins allocated to it but also with a limited amount of generators required to be built. Completing one stage will give you the coins needed to complete the next stage. Even if you know from the start how many generators you will have to eventually build to complete all the stages of a level, you won’t be able to initially place on the grid all the elements needed to support all these generators simply because the allocated coins will not suffice. For those that do like a more restrictive approach, some levels offer a bonus star for completing them with an optimal solution and by placing one extra generator than the amount required by the level.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2995305574
Aside from the main game (which contains dozens of levels), I Made Myself An AI also offers a sandbox mode that has you start on a small board and expand it as you add more and more generators while keeping the entire construction thermo-stable. The sandbox game can be configured through a set of parameters such as the size of the grid and the amount of coins you can spend.

I Made Myself An AI is a really neat game, with neither too challenging nor too easy difficulty. The levels from the main game will keep you busy for several hours, and the sandbox mode can easily add a few more hours on top of that. The game is highly replayable, both in the main part (you can retry levels to reach different solutions, or for the bonus star that can be earned in some of them), as well as in the sandbox mode.

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City Legends is a series of hidden object games in which the main protagonist is a renowned horror book author whose works are inspired by their own personal experiences with the occult, witchcraft and the supernatural. Each of the games narrates one specific episode from the author’s adventures, which will, later on, become the plot for their next publication.

Trapped In Mirror is the second installment of the series, where we get to see the author investigating the mystery of a beautiful ghost trapped in a mirror, who also kidnapped the novelist’s publishing agent in her mirror world. The plot is heavily based on the legend of Bloody Mary[en.wikipedia.org], borrowing the main events and characters from folklore, but placing them in a modern context.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2993261845
I consider City Legends to be one of the most enjoyable HOG series on the market, with well-done games in all aspects. They not only check all the boxes, but they also provide alternatives for various playstyles. For instance, a nice feature that I haven’t encountered in any other HOGs is that the player can choose to solve any minigame either on easy difficulty or on hard. This is independent of the difficulty set at the beginning of the game, which has an impact on the recharge time of the hint button, as well as on how the hidden object scenes are highlighted. The easy mode of a minigame simply means that the player will need fewer iterations to solve it (for instance, fewer digits on a code, or fewer moves required), notably decreasing its complexity.

Aside from the above feature, another thing that I liked a lot was the fact that all the collectibles were marked in every scene. There are indicators for each of the three types of collectibles, with different states depending on whether the collectible was already picked up or not. These are also shown on the map (where you can also see in which rooms you still need to perform actions). While this aspect is for me a bit stressful in other games (I usually dislike having to replay the whole game from scratch just because I missed collectible at some point), City Legends was absolutely great in that regard, and I was finally able to fully relax, while also enjoying gathering these collectibles. Among them, there are not only static objects but also morphing objects and a special type of collectible - bookmarks - which you can then use to buy decorative items for the author’s office in an extra scene.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2993261779
The hidden object scenes are not only very well done (having beautiful artwork and items blending perfectly with the background), but also very varied. There is at least one scene of each of the common types (list of items, silhouettes, etc.) as well as some new interactive ones. Additionally, you can choose between playing a Match 3 game or solving the hidden objects scene, or even swap between them as you wish to cross out the next item on the list. The HO scenes, together with the minigames (some of them also being very fresh) are all quite exciting to play and discover, even for HOG veterans.

Trapped In Mirror also introduces a new mechanic to the genre: choices. At specific points in the story, you can choose to progress immediately, or to unlock an extra location and respectively more information about the background story of one character. The location comes with a new set of puzzles to figure out, together with new items scattered in adjacent rooms and a respective achievement for completing it. .

All of the other features that one would expect from a HOG are present in City Legends too: a fast travel map, highlighting of the hidden object scenes, a nice journal tracking the story and your objectives, plenty of characters and cutscenes, and an in-depth walkthrough / strategy guide, listing all the actions, solutions and collectibles. All hidden object scenes as minigames can be replayed from the Extras menu unlocked after the end of the game, which also contains the cutscenes, the collections, the music and concept art. The item inventory rarely goes above five or six items, making it quite easy to follow which object is needed for a puzzle. The game is also designed to contain these puzzles and minigames in groups of three or four locations, reducing the back-and-forth between scenes to a minimum. The overall difficulty is slightly higher than the previous game and the puzzles are somewhat less intuitive, but overall it still has a very casual gameplay.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2993261959
The game can be completed in around 3 to 4 hours, and the Collector’s Edition adds an extra ~45 mins chapter to the main game, with its own distinct story, while still being related to the main plot. As a HOG, City Legends: Trapped In Mirror is enjoyable in all aspects, aside from the fact that it does not have Steam-integrated achievements, although it does have many in-game achievements.

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