Recent reviews by chefjeff

TL;DR: This is a well made piece of interactive fiction with a cool, uncommon art style. For people who like reading it's one of those must-play games that defines a genre!


Now, for a more nuanced review:

In Disco Elysium, you play as an amnesiac, alcohol and drug addicted detective who is trying to solve a murder in a run-down harbor.

The game is played through a series of conversations with many, many options. In between talking to people (and yourself) in your detective work, can explore the harbor district of the city through a isometric perspective, and will encounter challenges that are completed through skill checks -- die rolls based on your character's skills that must exceed a target number to succeed.

There's a lot that Disco Elysium does right -- The story is very engaging, gives you tons of agency, and you become pretty invested in what happens to the characters. Very few times have I wanted to hold my bladder to keep reading and see what happens. Disco Elysium has given me the most of those moments in my life.

The presentation is beautiful and stands out from lots of other games nowadays that try for the typical popular anime, dark fantasy, or cozy styles. The art resonates with the themes of the writing; the post-revolution, washed-up malaise is felt in every bit of this game's presentation. The music accompanying all of this is distant and atmospheric, taking a backseat to the high-quality voice acting. The rich. deep voice of the narrator is consistently good and worth noting.

Now most RPGs will give you decisions on how you want to approach the evil wizard, romance the princess, or haggle with a shopkeeper. Disco Elysium is not most RPGs. A core mechanic is ideology, of all things. What your character believes in. Are you a communist? A moralist? A neoliberal? A fascist? This is a very strange thing for an RPG like this to try, but there are dialogue options throughout the game that allow you to pursue a political ideology during your detective work.

I'm all for crazy, fun, and entertaining ideas in a game like this. I think it works in the capacity of "Haha that's funny", but I get the impression that the developers were pretty serious about implementing this mechanic. They have spoken before that they have subscribed to the ideologies of Marx and Engels and have created this game as a result. Especially after finishing the game, the communist themes of the game are very prevalent. It feels like if I want to be a communist, the dialogues options to be a communist are framed as morally good and upstanding, and I'm assuming that's due to the biases of the writers. What this also means is that there's clearly veiled contempt for other political ideologies all throughout the game. Most of the neoliberal dialogue options just make you sound like a douchebag, and being a centrist, you still are considered "part of the problem".

I still had a very good experience with this game by not taking it too seriously and just enjoying the characters, but even while Disco Elysium does give you a unique opportunity to express yourself, it waves its finger at you and moralizes to you about why you're wrong or doesn't let you be as precise as you'd like. It's either revolutionary communist, or evil, capitalist fat-cat.

All this being said, it's still a great game, and does its messaging better than lots of other games made by progressives. Please try it out. A full recommendation from me!

From the bit I've played, it's a high quality JRPG that has a very fascinating presentation. I don't think I've ever seen a game look quite like this before. It's quite interesting! And judging by how hard it is to execute well on this style, I really don't think I will see a game look like this again.

Don't let the game's appearance intimidate you, though. The mechanics and gameplay should be very familiar to JRPG fans, and the story is very traditional high-fantasy.

I wanted to get this review out early to help bolster the game in its early days, but I have a feeling I'll enjoy the rest of it. Great job, developers!

Try it out if you're a JRPG fan or are interested in the game's presentation.

TL;DR: This is what it would look like if Tim Burton decided to make a horror game with no jumpscares and the puzzle platforming of 2000's games like Psychonauts. For the style alone, it's awesome. Check it out.


Little NIghtmares is a short game that is very dense with polish and detail. I love the way it looks, the way it sounds, and the fact that I could enjoy a spooky game like this that doesn't have any cheap jump scares. It is a quality horror game that instead of trying to constantly give you a heart attack, it makes you feel very small and vulnerable. Most of the environments are made for people much larger than your player character and it feels novel and fun to try to navigate them while staying hidden from the grotesque creatures that are trying to eat you. Each level focuses on a particular type of one of these creatures that you avoid as you escape from a nightmarish restaurant submarine. The story is told visually through the environments, as there is no dialogue. This leaves quite a bit up to interpretation, but I'm the type who is excited to watch lore theories on youtube, so I don't mind too much.


What I did like:
-Awesome aesthetic
-Great, theme-resonant soundtrack
-Well-designed, polished levels
-No jump scares (There are a few swells in audio and surprises, but nothing I would call a jump scare)
-Genuniely creepy


What I didn't like:
-Controls felt a bit weird. It's a 3D platformer where you're always looking from one side of a room, and the perception of depth with making jumps or knowing exactly where things are can be a bit challenging at times.
-There is a single solution to progress through puzzles. This unfortunately took me out of the experience several times to consult a walkthrough as certain situations left me with no idea on what to do to progress. I can appreciate a challenging puzzle, but some solutions were a tad frustrating.


Overall, a quality horror game. Give it a try :)

TL;DR: This is a cute mix of the style of Spongebob Battle For Bikini Bottom with the gameplay of Fromsoft's souls games. It's a fun game with flaws, but it's worth your time if you're a soulslike fan or if you are interested in the quaint art style.

You journey as a small hermit crab through a trash-ridden ocean and fight against sea creatures that have succumbed to pollution by attacking with a fork and using the powers of makeshift trash shells. Though there are some interesting twists on traditional soulslike mechanics such as the shells, the game is a pretty traditional reskin of soulslike gameplay: You play through sections of platforming and fighting smaller enemies, you'll fight large, creative bosses and collect microplastics (souls/currency) to level up and purchase other upgrades. Despite the cutesy look of the game, it can be very challenging, but it is still quite accessible with a substantial set of difficulty adjustment settings so that newer players can play at a level that is just right for them.


What I did like:
The strongest parts of the game for me were definitely the art-style, world design, and gameplay.

The developers chose an art style that is going to age very well. It's cute, cartoony, and the cast of characters is very huggable. It reminds me heavily of 2000's platformer games like Battle for Bikini Bottom, Psychonauts, and Ratchet and Clank. Those games may be dated, but the look of them is so endearing and they capture my imagination. I can picture myself saying the same thing in 20 some years about Another Crab's Treasure.

The world design isn't immaculate like some of the souls games, but I love the way that the world looks. You are in an ocean with a city made of trash. The buildings are made of cereal boxes. The benches are made of playing cards. The roads are made with those insanely long receipts you get from CVS. It's so creative and I couldn't help myself but smile seeing all of the choices the developers made to create the environment. While the hub area is a bit big and disjointed for the limited amount of things you can do in it, it's still fun to just lost for a bit.

The gameplay is solid. It doesn't quite feel as weighty as Fromsoft's souls games, but everything feels right.


Okay, now for what I didn't like:
My main complaint about Another Crab's Treasure is the writing. It can be a bit funny at times, but you can tell the game is written by self-indulgent, bleeding heart environmentalist millenials/gen Zs. I don't have a problem if you want your game to make people ask interesting questions and ponder humanity's pollution of the ocean. In fact, please do. That's an interesting subject. However, the game forces its serious points through realizing its villains (the destroyers of the ocean) as comically straw-manned evil businessmen/confederate plantation owners, and cyptobros. The game flat-out says that revolutionary violence and anger towards people you can classify this way is justified, which is definitely giving "I'm a member of antifa". It's embarrassingly lacking nuance and disappointing when everything else in this game is so great and inspires so much awe. If you want someone to consider your viewpoint and messaging, insulting the people who need to hear your message the most is the worst thing you can do.

Other than the annoyingly blunt messaging and poorly realized villains, I wish there was more voice acting. We really only get voice acting for major cutscenes and no other part of the game, so it starts to feel weird when we do get it. I forgot what characters sounded like due to how infrequently I actually heard them speak. I understand if this is just for budget reasons, but I can't help but mention it.


All of that being said, Aggrocrab set out to make an absolutely huge game for their second project and they did a great job. Even if I don't like how they implement their writing, what they have done here is not an easy thing and they should be praised and paid for it. I have played Going Under as well and enjoyed that too! I'm looking forward to hearing more from them.

This is a time capsule of great online gaming from the mid 2000's. If you want to experience a wealth of nostalgia, or just want a peek into the not-so-distant past, Mardek is a solid choice.

Let me tell you in how many ways this game is so impressively reflective of its era.

The game itself is a parody of Final Fantasy and JRPGs, made by a person who clearly grew up on those games, which a lot of people had around the mid 2000's. There were tons of fun new games inspired by this genre like Adventure Quest, Sonny, and Swords and Sandals, and Mardek somehow feels like all of those games at once. Even if you haven't played Mardek before, it will feel like seeing a long-lost friend again if you enjoyed any of these games.

The graphics look like a passion project from a young person who was just finding their style on deviantart, drawing their own anime and furry OCs, and it's very endearing. We now live in an era of licensed and stock assets being put into indie games to lend them a more professional look, but the developer made all of their own artwork. While it is not the most technically impressive artwork, the style fits perfectly to be symbolic of this era of gaming.

The music is a bunch of MIDI-style fantasy-style songs that would sound right at home on Runescape soundtrack, which is just more of a reason why it's a brilliant time capsule. The songs are legit well composed as well, and the developer did all of the composition themselves too. A real Toby Fox of their era.

The dialogue is a strong point of this game -- it's funny, yet there are moments which the game does take itself seriously. There are great moments where the game breaks the 4th wall, parodies tropes of JRPG games, and makes good original joke. There are other moments that work to move the story along, and they definitely work, but aren't Jane Austen-level prose. The story is at its best when it's making you laugh.

Play Mardek if you're an RPG fan who grew up on flash games in the 2000's. If you didn't, the experience may feel a bit dated, but you'll still find a solid RPG game to play underneath it all.

Costume Quest is a game you play for the cute art style, witty dialogue, and Halloween festivity. Despite being quite nostalgic for adults, it's actually targeted towards younger audiences. This is very clear in the core gameplay loop of bare-bones JRPG battle system that is so simple that I got bored of it in less than an hour. This makes me sad, because I love everything else about this game. The music, environments, art, story, it's all screaming "This is what it's like to be a kid on Halloween" and I'm in love with it.

If you have a young child (10 or younger) that you'd like to introduce to RPGs, Costume Quest is a perfect start especially around Halloween. If you're older than that but still love Halloween vibes, I can recommend this game. If those don't apply to you, there are simply better RPGs that exist which you can spend your time on. The Pokemon games, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Quest do the core game loop of what Costume Quest tries to do, but better and all sport their own great worlds, stories, and art.

I believe a Costume Quest TV show was made, and I think that is a better approach for what they're trying to do with this game; they're trying to tell a story, making you feel like a kid again, and put you in the holiday spirit. Having a standout JRPG battle system doesn't necessarily fit on that list, so I may watch the show and see if it's any good.

A well-made, albeit short, beat-em-up game that pays homage to the subcultures of anime, video games, and rock music.

Fans of the Scott Pilgrim franchise will love everything in this game and it's an easy pick-up for them. Even those who aren't familiar with Scott Pilgrim will not be confused with the plot due to how simply the story is presented.

However, I can really only recommend this game on sale. There are only 7 levels to play, and the different characters feel quite similar to one another. There's not a whole lot of replay value here and most people could finish the game in less than 4 hours.

That being said, the small amount of content that this game has is quite high quality. The animations and environments still look amazing over a decade later. The soundtrack is so good that it's been on my Spotify Wrapped. The gameplay is fun, but nothing groundbreaking.

The only parts of the experience I found lacking were the not-so-complex boss fights and enemy AI. Some of the bosses don't have multiple phases and will resort to really simple attacks that can be figured out quite easily. Even the more difficult bosses can be cheesed with the right moves. And more than both of those things, the game is a bit lacking in length. If we solve the problem of game length too, I'd want a more robust online matchmaking system.

The Beginner's Guide is a meta-commentary on the creation and consumption of art.

I wouldn't say my experience playing this game was fun or exhilarating, but it was thought provoking. The game meditates on the idea of trying to understand or get to know people through their art. But perhaps people don't want to consent to sharing the deepest parts of their psyche, or characterizing someone through their art based off of your own experiences can be harmful. It's very far removed from actually just getting to know someone by just spending time with them.

When games inevitably get studied in universities, this will surely be used as teaching material.

Good work on this devs :)

Superhot is an interesting combination of the problem solving of puzzle games with the action in first-person shooters. It's a novel and well-executed concept that exists within an analog-horror setting that scared me out much more than I thought it would.

You'll enjoy Superhot if you are fond of Matrix-style action movies, as you get to emulate the fight scenes here, or Portal, as that's the most popular game I can name that feels quite similar to Superhot.

You won't enjoy Superhot if you can't take any horror in games at all -- I initially put this game away for years because younger me was scared of the messages the game was showing me. You also won't like this game if you play all shooters like Call of Duty and try to run-and-gun. Most of the time, you'll be punished for not being patient in Superhot.

Overall, good game. A bit expensive for the 2 hours-ish of playtime, but it's well made and there is an endless mode that unlocks after you finish the game. I'd consider getting it on sale.

This is a walking simulator that is the epitome the 2010's era indie art games like Dear Esther. It has a strong focus on simplicity of gameplay that consists between travelling while listening to a couple discuss their dreams and emotional trauma. It's all tied together with pretty piano and string music.

The First Tree is a bit of a slow burn with not much action. There are beats to the plot which stirred my emotions a surprising amount, but I did spend most of the time running towards the next objective, or at least trying to find it. It was a bit frustrating at times to not know where I needed to go in such a big map. The navigation was really only one of the few elements of friction for me, but unfortunately that's really the only agency you have here.

Gamers that are impatient, objective oriented, and don't find themselves stopping to smell the roses will not enjoy the first tree as much as gamers (and even non-gamers) who want to listen to stories about family, like the aesthetics of foxes, or are looking for an artsy, melodramatic indie game.

I'm one of the former types of gamers, but I still liked The First Tree. The ending was quite clever and I did appreciate the inclusion of Message To Bears on the soundtrack -- you couldn't have chosen a better artist for this game's music.

Overall, this is worth it to buy it on sale. I got it for $0.99 and that's worth it. I don't see myself replaying this game. It was nice though, and I'll talk to my friends about it.