Recent reviews by MindMine

It reminds me of Myst trying to mix with a Survival Horror title. It's an interesting blend that never feels mixed well but wobbles back and forth.

Intricate Puzzles, including large environmental puzzles, are incredibly well-designed but can drag from the player's perspective. The combat is OK. There's a snowball effect of QoL once you unlock more weapons.

The environments are beautiful and the animations are well-crafted. The only caveat is it is easy to get physically caught on elements of the environment and the animations can slow pacing down a lot.

The story is left shrouded in elements of mystery as there is no dialogue or text. Everything is told through the visuals (which is impressive and creates a haunting experience that makes you want to try to process everything).

Overall:

➡️ Beautiful environment
➡️ Pacing issues
➡️ Annoying enemy AI (not in a challenging way)
➡️Story is interesting enough
➡️Interesting puzzles
➡️Environment feels thought-out
➡️Too easy to get caught in the environment and get body-blocked by enemies

5/10

The Gunk is a fantastic game that deserves more attention. If you love games like Subnautica, Slime Rancher, and Journey to the Savage Planet, you'll like this!

The game shows it has a ton of heart and tries to do a lot with what it has. The environments are fantastical and beautiful (after clearing out some gunk), and the photo mode is a great touch to go along with it!

You get a little of everything. A bit of light platforming, light RPG, light puzzling, and a lot of adventure. There's nice value in learning new skills, collecting resources, and clearing out the gunk to have nature flourish again.

The VO is good and it's enjoyable to listen to characters go back and forth with one another. The characters have personalities, which makes the time put into the adventure even more enjoyable.

The environmental animations were good while the character animations were OK to a little rough. Overall, the game has a lot of heart, a good story, and was a fun experience that didn't overstay its' welcome.

Overall:
➡️Beautiful environment design
➡️Fun platforming sections
➡️Simple puzzles that didn't detract from the story
➡️Fun exploration
➡️Can bug out your character in the environment if not careful
➡️ Good VO
➡️ Good music

8/10

A story that gives vibes of Layers of Fear and Visage while having a fantastic stand-out story.

The environment is beautiful with great color palette choices that set the mood and great lighting design to go with it.

The story has great twists that highlight the horrors of the creative mind, while pointing out the pains of real life.

Some of the VO can get a bit annoying at times and it feels like it misses its' mark at times due to the translation quality of the script. It isn't terrible but the translation can get a bit rough or unnatural sounding at times (in English).

The pacing is really good and time can fly. It feels like you have experienced SO MUCH in a small amount of time.

Overall Score: 8/10

Gameplay & In-Depth Review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=batENLsmufw

This felt like an amazing combination of Plague Inc. meets Creepshow!

The pulpy comic book style was beautiful and worked so well for telling the story. For such dark topics, it did help make things much more vibrant without taking away from the creepiness of things.

The art style and themes are incredibly consistent throughout the game.

The stories are very interesting and revealed with great twists as well as timing.

Difficulty builds with different mechanical layers that keep gameplay interesting as well as challenging. It felt like this game was so thoroughly thought out!

Try out the demo for yourself as that is what got me into the game!

Overall Score: 8/10

Gameplay & Thoughts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIh7540iANI

A multi-layered story with a unique visual twist that intensifies the fear of the unknown.

The music is fantastic! The audio is great and so vital for a concept like this. It builds up so much tension and paranoia. So many small things made the game so much more tense and enjoyable.

There is a very intelligent design for how things visually change within the "Gloom".

VO is very good and adds some nice touches to the storytelling.

The NPCs aren't incredibly difficult but it is important to create a basic strategy for handling them. In the end, the biggest enemy was your mind.

This was a very enjoyable journey with engaging twists, where even negative twists feel enjoyable to experience.

Overall score: 7/10

Gameplay & In-Depth Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOARTmL4THc

This game has some nice levels of tension and creepiness. For a solo dev - there was A LOT put into this game.

There are some moments of quirk but it was an overall enjoyable ride.

It had some really nice sound elements and animations that helped to build out the experience.

There are a few puzzles that are fairly straight forward. They don't bloat the flow of the game and helped to keep pacing up.

This game makes me really intrigued on what games the Dev come out with in the future!

Gameplay & Review:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeLr7gvqGoA

A wild ride that creates a fantastic atmospheric experience!

This game has good pacing. The devs do a good job of driving the player forward and making them feel tension. The jump-scares are earned rather than over-utilized.

The game is rich in story, especially throughout the environment, and how things subtly change.

Visuals and audio are constantly unnerving and built up paranoia well.

The game is highly impressive for a two person team!

Overall Score: 8/10

Gameplay & In-Depth Review:
https://youtu.be/bcXtOtu3wa0

A slightly lackluster ending with a great journey.

The Developer did a great job setting tone with the game and keeping it consistent throughout. This helped build up the tension set up jump-scares very well.

The story and changing of elements in the environment kept my attention and made it to where I wanted to know more.

There is some replay-ability with 3 different endings (the easiest to achieve being the bad ending). The game is fairly linear so it does make it more difficult to figure out what else you can do to get an alternative ending. After doing as much as I could to get an alternative ending, I still couldn't get something else (which felt a bit deflating).

The story is human and relatable. I can really appreciate it and it is consistent throughout the entire game. The things you experience as you play through the game ties in very well to the story the Devs are telling (rather than it feeling like a random experience meant to be scary for scary sake).

I believe this game is one of the first major games for the Devs. With that being the case, this is incredibly impressive and I eagerly look forward to what they will release next.

Gameplay & Thoughts:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq-CO1uFz20

A fun ride with a great build of a world that I'd love to see more of!

The art is fantastic. The details in the world, details on the characters, and the overall creature design is so good! It creates a level of immersion and intrigue that leaves you wanting more.

The UI, especially during battles, is very clean and clear. It is very impressive as it is easy to use but doesn't put too much stuff on the screen so you can enjoy the world you're in.

The lore people, places, creatures, and things are all very well written and interesting to read through.

The combat animations are very well done. So well done I found myself physically reacting when seeing many of them.

I never felt like there was too much "bloat" in the game and I enjoyed the main storyline as well as the side stories.

The audio fidelity of the VO was there but the accents were all over the place which created immersion breaking moments and confusion as so many other aspects of the game were well developed.

There is some replay-ability due to achievements, different endings, side-quests you might have missed, and clothing items for the main character that you may not have had the chance to unlock.

There are some weird quirks with NPCs sitting backwards on chairs, walking into walls, etc. which can break your immersion and feel strange considering so many other aspects of the game are so well done.

Overall score: 6/10 (10/10 being impossible - the perfect game)

Gameplay + In-Depth Review:
https://youtu.be/n7z6bZw2Xo4

I had a lot of fun with this game and am very impressed about how all of the different elements came together for the overall experience!

The environment is very interesting and it has a very dream-like sense to it due to it having a mixture of organic and in-organic elements. The space almost feels like when you travel through an abandoned building and you see nature attempt to reclaim it. You can see the influences of SCP and Backrooms while also keeping true to Vidas' style of environment design.

The concept feels familiar enough when connecting elements of this game to games within the "Observation" / "Spot the anomaly" line of games while keeping it refreshing.

The sound design and music are really good. They add such satisfying layers to the gameplay loop / overall experience.

The VO is enjoyable and a great touch between different levels. This provides the carrot in front of the player to continue on. You not only play to overcome the challenges each level provides but also to uncover more story/lore about the Smile Simulation. (Shout-outs to Cheshire Jack and Kwirkee)

Each entity is unique from the other and the layering of entities at later levels make for a very engaging juggle in order to survive.

I am honestly so impressed by this game and really had so much fun with this. It was one of the better game experiences I have had thus far this year! This game deserves a lot more attention and reviews!

Overall: 7/10

Gameplay & in-depth review/thoughts:
https://youtu.be/SBoSarDVC7c