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Hustle Cat is one of those titles you stumble across on a rainy day, sitting idle in your Steam library begging you to dive into it. A cute and comfy foray into Visual Novels, Hustle Cat has you playing as a couch-surfing Avery Gray. Avery is set with the task of getting a new job while staying at his aunt's, and before long stumbles across the cat cafe where a majority of the story unfolds.

The cast of characters is varied to a point, four male and two female cast members besides Avery himself (who can be of any gender that the player prefers). Five of these six, of course, can be romanced in one form or another by following their routes within the story. Where Hustle Cat shines, however, is its fairly early plot twist where you realize you won't just be romancing baristas and that the stakes climb considerably afterwards.

After playing through every route (including a secret sixth route, shhh), I found most of the characters to be both likable and fairly fleshed out. Each given their moment to shine in their own route as well as minor roles to play in each others, by the time the story wraps up on it all you feel like you know each personally. This is vital in any story, but especially in a visual novel where the charm is carried by its cast and keeps you glued to the screen for hours as you desperately want to know more.

My first play-through I was naturally gravitated towards Finley, the boisterous and slightly nerdy media manager for the cafe. It might just be that I absolutely loved her hair, but I ended up going down her route without much of a hiccup. Even after completing the rest of the routes, this one stood out to me mostly due to the fact that it felt like the "true ending" for me. It was the one I sought out and actively wanted to go down, and each route has a sense of finality to it so that completing the rest isn't really necessary.


The only case where this may be disputed is the final, secret route once you complete the five main ones. This opens up previously unexplored plot points that were always in the background but never fleshed out properly. If you are absolutely dying to know everything about this game, you should try to find and finish this route but I wouldn't say its a necessity to enjoy the game.

This all said, I found that the story was predictable to a fault and completing each run is a standard slosh of skipping over the bits you've already read to get to the new character route. If you can get Hustle Cat on sale, you will be treated to a few solid hours of a rather cute and sappy cafe tale but I cannot fully recommend this at its full price.

Short version: if you want a colony management sim in space with dynamic elements and living breathing world, this is it.

All the rest:
Launched from your crumbling spaceship in orbit, RimWorld puts you directly in charge of three survivors stranded on a foreign planet. Your green-horned colonists are ill-equipped, besides some supplies that were jettisoned alongside them during their escape. You will need to make use of all their variable skills in order to help them deal with the environment and each other.

RimWorld combines elements of rogue-like, survival, and city sims in an enjoyable experience that I can't stop sinking hours into. The system that it employs from your colonist's psychology, their individual health (down to specific injuries, infections and conditions for every body part imaginable) and how they interact socially are all insanely detailed. At any point in time you can pull up your colonist to view details such as how they feel about their situation, if their temperature is optimal for their living conditions or whether they are crushing on a fellow colonist. The layers within are excellent and underlies what the developer claims is the main point of this game: it’s a story simulator.

The core game play is driven by an AI Storyteller you select at the beginning, each brimming with their own personality and plot preferences. Cassandra Classic will bring a more balanced game, Phoebe Chillax will let you take your time and build a solid base before throwing serious threats at you, and Randy Random will do whatever he feels like. Each one you can set at various difficulties of which you'll find the right fit after a few games.

Occasionally, the AI storyteller will throw challenges or boons at you. These can range from a colonist joining your party to a group of raiders bearing down on your camp. The diversity of events keeps you on your toes and later in the game and you'll be clinging to the hope of a positive one triggering as things ramp up. One of the more amusing events I encountered was having a pack of alpha beavers (exactly what you think they are) show up and then immediately start to consume the area’s forest life. Most often, as long as you're not completely overwhelmed, this just provides an exorbitant amount of extra meat as they are not challenging to kill and are actually quite pitiful. But like most threats in the game, if you leave it for even a day, they can clear cut most of the trees in the area. This leaves desolation in their wake and you without a good supply of wood.

Once your storyteller is in place, you generate the entire world. Now, pick a singular square of this newly formed digital world and you'll be off to the races. You're given multiple different biomes to start off in with their own benefits and drawbacks. Want to start off somewhere tropical to avoid winter and cold colonists? Great, keep in mind that tropical biomes are more likely to have extremely aggressive fauna and disease. Prefer instead the colder climates of the north then? Enjoy having very sparse tree population for wood as well as no sustainable ways to grow crops early in the game. The place you choose to start your colony will challenge you just as much as any raider might.

The way RimWorld pulls off being such an engaging story generation machine is in how all the colonists you utilize are random Joes. You cannot personalize any of them, and each is randomly generated. That said, you can still cheese the system a bit and keep randomly generating the colonists until you get something you like, but that's no fun. Running with a purely random crew will both teach you the fundamentals of the game and also provide a modicum of added challenge. You may get a colonist that is ex-military, making them excellent at combat but they can also be terrible at farming or taming animals. Another may be a talented politician, able to communicate effectively with local tribes but will then refuse to do basic grunt work like cooking or cleaning. Bringing these colonists together to accomplish daily tasks and get your colony up and running is key to survival.

Combat in RimWorld is fairly straightforward; you draft your colonists, creating a mini-militia then organize where they should be to fire at hostiles. "Drafting" your colonists isn’t the only way to get them to fight, but it the one instance in which you directly control what they do and where they move. You can order them to move behind cover, fire at specific combatants or get in close with a melee weapon if necessary. Considering the variables in play, combat is normally fairly smooth as colonists trade shots with raiders or any other threat that may assault your base of operations. Word to the wise is to not go in under armed. Fairly early in my playthroughs, I would assume that hiding my colonists behind trees with their bolt-action rifles would be enough to win most fights. While this is true of some of the earlier skirmishes, your beginners luck can quickly turn on you when you face higher numbers of enemies with more developed weapons. Turning the tables is not a difficult feat, but does require planning beforehand. You can set up security measures around your base, from basic sandbags to turrets, as well as a few traps if you get creative. I once created a funnel into my base that would require enemies to pass through a super-heated metal hallway into which I filtered all excess heat that my base generated. The heat would not bother them too much as first, until they got deeper in and were immediately fried.

The game still gets a fair amount of love and attention from its developers. Coupled with an extensive modding community, life continues to be breathed into RimWorld. There will be considerable improvements made in coming patches as this game still has room to grow and further augment its already extremely deep systems. If any of this sounds even slightly interesting, I would highly advise picking up a copy at your earliest convenience and losing yourself in the outer rim.

This is the game that causes me to be perpetually late for things, whether that is simply a social engagement or life in general.

10/10, I love this game to death and will always ask for five more minutes. One of the few games I have played to the point of falling asleep on the keyboard.

It's hard to think of another game in recent history that has grabbed my interest and sucked me into it's world so thoroughly as Sunless Sea. The storytelling alone is compelling enough for several runs at a time. Also for once is such a thing as a "Terror" or mental state mechanic properly implemented - and actually terrifying.

Simple mechanics that lead to deep gameplay gives players something to sink their teeth into with Banished.

Highly recommended, super addicting and has a perfect dose of challenge to go along with the experience.