Recent reviews by Cracktus Jack

...is a third-person beat'em up with stealth. Having just captured the Joker, Batman brings him back to Arkham Asylum, only to see him immediately escape captivity and take over the island, having planned his return all along in order to set a trap for Batman.

A modern brawler that perfected the hit-and-counter style originally popularized by games such as Assassin's Creed, your goal in a brawl is to time your hits, blocks and counters just right, jumping from one opponent to the next. Control is pretty intuitive and simple to master, and you can easily take on a horde of enemies after a bit of practice and stack up combos with dozens of consecutive strikes, although some opponents with knives and shock sticks forces you to change your tactics.

You initially are limited to your basic batarang, grappling hook, and gliding cape, but unlock more gear as the story progress, including explosive gel, cryptographic sequencer, zipline launcher and remote control batarang, as well as upgrades to your existing gear such as the batclaw. You can further upgrade your gear, armor and fighting style through Waynetech upgrades, unlocked through XP points from fighting enemies (more points with high combos) and finding collectibles and Riddler Trophies.

It's the game that showed it was possible to take movies and television IPs and turn them into hits. Up until then, most attempts were mere half-assed attempts at cashing in on the latest trend. But the makers of this game really took it to heart, melding an environment that was originally described as halfway between Christopher Nolan's Batman movies and the classic Batman Animated Series. Sure, you don't need to be a die-hard Batman fan to enjoy this game, yet it's shock-full of fan-service references.

There's much more reliance on stealth than later games of the franchise. Most fights are in closed space, rooms with air ducks, wall-mounted gargoyles, floor panelling and walls can blow up, while goons armed with machine guns patrol. At first, they casually walk around, until they find the unconscious body of your first victim. From there, they start getting nervous, pairing off as they search for you, calling you out as their panic levels rise. You get to be the Batman they fear so much, the shadow that haunts them!

Story progression may be linear, but the map doesn't feel too confined. There is a reason you're limited to specific areas at first, certain story events shut some passages or open new ones. Additional paths open as you unlock further gear, new pathways open to you: The explosive gel will allow you to blow up walls and floors, the batclaw will allow you pull open a wall-mounted air duck to access it, etc., and there are plausible story elements explaining why you don't get specific gear until you do. Eventually, you can pretty much travel anywhere on the island and to any building of the asylum complex.

Returning to Batman: Arkham Asylum over a decade later shows how far games have gone when it comes to graphics. Character models, especially outside cutscenes, aren't great. The only thing that moves on Joker's face is the mouth, Harley Quinn's hair look like they're made of plastic, in-engine cutscenes are stiff, textures are low definition. Even the animations for the fight don't feel like they connect: down kick an enemy, see your foot clip through their leg, and then watch the enemy bounces upwards while clutching their... head? It all aged very badly.

Combat, while impressive at the time, really has no variety. There's one button to hit, one button to block, you just combine it with the right direction on your gamepad or keyboard to strike or block the right baddie without really developing any technique or skill. Sure, you get to throw the occasional batarang in your combo, perhaps a body throw if you time it right, but mostly you'll just punch your way from one guy to the next, perhaps jump-kicking instead if the target happens to be slightly away. All that ninja-style brawling really is nothing but fluff.


I hope I didn't appear too hard on this game, because it is actually great! My strongest recommendation will be to those who haven't played the later games, as those simply build upon this one and expanded on it, but there's something special about going back to the game that started it all! Definitely worth playing, before the sequels if you can!

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This was just my opinion.

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...is a twin-stick shoot'em up. Opal must explore his family tomb in order to defeat the evil soul gems preventing your father from resting in peace.

Beyond, not to be mistaken with Beyond, merges the gameplay of top-view twin-stick shooter mechanics with bullet-hell gameplay. You walk around from room to room, dodging attacks from a small variety of evil gems while shooting them down. You can hide behind cover, leap over precipices, break jars to find healing hearts, and even break down certain rocks once you get certain power ups.

When fighting, all doors are shut closed and only open once all evil gems are defeated. Doing so will sometimes give you a key, allowing light backtracking to open doors. Across each dungeon, you also find orbs, three of which you will need to open the boss's door, and cleanse the dungeon to move on to the next one. With each dungeon you complete, you unlock an alternative weapon.

Each weapon has an additional use beyond attacking. Initially, you start with a simple rapid-fire gun. The second weapon allows for a slower, much stronger bullets, which has a slight area of effect upon exploding and may also destroy cracked rocks (a double-edge sword: it can open a path for you, but it also removed potential cover from enemy fire). The next weapon is a shorter-range spread gun (shooting multiple bullets across a ≈20° angle), which can also be used to light up braziers in darker rooms.

There's an unmistakable inspiration from the original Legend of Zelda dungeons in how the map is laid, each room being a tile-based rectangle with centered doors on one or more walls, finding heart containers in broken vases, and unlocking doors with keys. The variety of creatures isn't high, but at least they behave differently: smaller gems bound to the same walls as you, fixed gems that rapid-fire, burning gems that jump around while leaving a trail of burning spots behind them, and larger, slower gems that move slowly but pass through walls.

It is oh so short, as dungeons aren't very big, and all three completed in under half an hour. If you've read previous reviews from me, you'll see me coming: it's a missed opportunity. The developer could've drawn a couple of dozens of individual rooms, add a bit of procedural generation in dungeon layouts, have variables that slightly increase enemy hit points and quantity being generated, and the game could carry itself through hours of gameplay of increasing difficulty. Add a point system, and you've just got yourself an arcade game worth actually spending money on!

With a lack of weapons and enemy variety, and the absence of single-use items or collectibles, you might as well take a closer look at the many alternatives available on Steam. Games such as Galaxy Champions TV or Xeno Crisis are great examples of single-room twin-stick shooters that offer a much longer experience with original settings of their own.


I can't hold much of a grudge over this game, developed by a single student, created for educational purpose and published for free as something other than publicity for another, larger game. Since it's short, I didn't feel like I wasted my time playing it, and have enjoyed the little time I did spend on it, so give it a quick try and see for yourself.

P.S.: Looking into this game made me discover the DigiPen Institute of Technology and all of the creative projects they've been publishing on Steam to give their students visibility in the industry. Everything they publish is free! I invite you to check out their library of games and try other, original projects!

This was just my opinion.

If you found this review helpful, please consider giving it a thumbs up, and feel free to check out more of my (purely opinionated) reviews.

...is a hidden object game. You fooled your way into marrying the princess, but must now face the consequences of your lies and become the hero you pretended to be.

You travel through the world on fix backgrounds, talking with other characters, interacting with the environment and picking up objects to unlock doors or puzzles. The differences between hidden object games and traditional point & click games are that the story is by no means the focus, merely the excuse to solve puzzles and walk through the typically hand-drawn backgrounds with little to no animations. In fact, you never actually see your character, except in small cut scenes.

Such games revolve around solving puzzles of various kinds: completing images from missing parts, moving pieces around to a specific layout or pattern in a limited quantity of moves, setting up correct sequences, and, of course, the namesake hidden object puzzle where you face a screenful of clutter for which you're given a list of twelve specific items to find, some requiring assembly or uncovery before being able to select them. If you're absolutely stuck, the game can point you to one of the objects you're missing, or allow you to skip the other puzzles entirely.

I appreciate the game being separated in different regions, chapters if you will, five to be exact. This gives the excuse for very different settings, drives the story forward a bit more than I'm used to seeing from other games in the genre, and also has the convenience of removing some of the usual tediousness: if you missed a clue or object, you only need to search the six to ten areas you have access to. Furthermore, backtracking is a lot less frustrating, since you often find objects at one end of a branching path, which is meant to be used in another area entirely.

Puzzles were varied enough, with very few hidden object puzzles being used twice. I didn't face the abstractness of item descriptions I've found in other games, meaning I could rely on patience to pinpoint harder-to-find items, rather than needing having no idea what I was looking for and clicking on items at random, or being forced to use the hint system, like I've had to do in other hidden object games I've played. Of course, I always found a certain charm to the hand-drawn aesthetics used for the hidden object puzzles, with removable objects being indistinguishable from the rest of the background.

Puzzles have no explanation, no details telling you what to do. The game doesn't have the level of detail required to act like puzzle box games and "having you figure it out". It's not merely a question of going through trials and errors: I honestly didn't even know what I was supposed to do in half the puzzles until I observed what happened when I tried and failed. Therein laid the only difficulty I faced, because once I figured out what I had to do to solve them, the puzzles were in fact way too easy.

The Fool is much older than it claims to be, with graphics that have aged poorly. It's native low-resolution 4:3 format looks horrible on modern computer displays, while the windowed mode is small enough to fit four times on my screen. There's no way this game is from 2015, it must be a decade older at the very least, far from justifying the asking price.


The Fool is a perfectly serviceable hidden object game, although one amid a myriad of others. I certainly wouldn't recommend spending full price on this, although price has never been a focus of my reviews before. If you have it in your library, it's worth its one-time playthrough. Just don't expect a particularly unique hidden object game.

This was just my opinion.

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...is a point & click adventure. Purple Tentacle has become more intelligent and has vowed to take over the world, so it is up to Bernard and his friends to return to the Maniac Mansion and save the world.

A remake of the Lucas Arts classic from the golden age of point & click games, you move your character around fixed 2D screens, going in doors, up and down stairs, and other passages. You control three different characters across time: Bernard is in the present, Hoagie is 200 years in the past, and Laverne is 200 years in the future. Things you do in the past may affect object placements or availability in the future, but it's best not to overthink the time travel and paradox.

On your way, you collect items you store in your inventory. This can be used on specific locations in the environment or with other objects, or given to other characters you come across. Using your Chron-O-John time capsule, you can send items to other characters, but once you've done so, you can do it from the menu without actually needing to travel all the way to the time capsule to send or retrieve them.

Depending on the item, person or interactive environment element, you can specify whether you want to open, close, push, pull, use, or talk to them. The answers aren't always straightforward or logical (this is a cartoony comedy, after all), and the game expects you to experiment using objects in different ways until you come across something that works, even if you don't know what it'll be used for at that time.

I can't stress how faithful the devs have been to the original game. Some might want to argue that translating a 320x240 resolution game to modern resolutions could really look like anything, but the entire game was recreated based on the original 1992 and 1993 concept arts used in the original game (which are unlocked once the game is completed). Even the audio is taken directly from the limited-edition CD-ROM version of the original game. And if you really want the original game, the option to play on the original 320x240 resolution (adapted to modern monitors) is available as well!

The game is packed full with slapstick and goofy humor. The characters are weird caricatures, the environments are deliberately twisted and exaggerated, the script is full of corny jokes. The use of objects is ridiculous, with a bunch of hidden achievements from misusing them (here's a free one: using the coffee with the decaf mug will get you the "And then the world explodes" achievement!). Even the very premise is ludicrous: a pet tentacle drinking toxic waste grows two arms (no hands or fingers mind you, merely two small stubs), and that's enough for it to feel empowered enough to attempt and succeed at taking over the world.

It feels like the game was short, a lot shorter than I remember it to be (my playtime includes being AFK for a few hours, and replaying multiple times to get missed achievements). This is without a doubt because I remembered what to do from my past playthrough, but that might just be it: the game heavily targets the nostalgia of gamers who played this game and others like it some 30 years ago, but doesn't have anything new or novel to add to them. It feels like when those old VHS movies were ported to DVD for the first time and they were trying to enhance it with additional content that fell flat. Here, you get images of concept arts, you can turn on a commentary voiceover while playing, and that's about it. I'm not saying I have better ideas of my own, but still...

Some of the mechanics haven't aged well at all. Even back then, having to clarify whether you're pushing, pulling, or using the object was slowly being phased out of point & click games. It's somewhat tedious to have to clarify that I wish to PUSH the button, or that I wish to OPEN the door. I clicked on it, isn't that enough? I understand that the original game was like that, so of course, they kept it here, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a mechanic that aged terribly and may annoy anyone that isn't playing this game with rose-tinted glasses.


There isn't much to say about Day of the Tentacle – Remastered except for what an absolutely perfect remastered edition it is. It has everything it should have: an impeccable port of the original game for modern computers, an aesthetically faithful modern resolution with the optional original resolution kept for posterity. It is the best possible way to introduce new or younger players to point & click classics.

This was just my opinion.

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...is a house building simulator. Build various houses from around the world, using their real-life respective construction methods. This review includes the 2022/05/26 update.

As of writing this, there are eleven different houses to pick from. These range from primitive buildings such as an igloo or a mud-brick house, to modern concrete or prefab houses, based on styles from all over the world. As you build each house, more are unlocked for you to build. While the earlier houses solely rely on locally accessible material, the rest have a supply of available material with more needing to be ordered as you progress through each step of the construction. Houses can be sold at a profit to purchase the following houses, but it is rarely required as you'll find old silverware and other loot when digging, easily financing your next house.

Each house is built using a step-by-step method from which you cannot stray. One house may need you to gather stone to form the house's base, followed by gathering bamboo sticks for the wall frames, followed by the roof. Another may need you to cut down trees, debark them, and measure and cut specific lengths of timber on which the house will sit, before proceeding to cutting planks for the floor. And yet another may require you to dig with a shovel, lay reinforcement blocks, install the pipes for plumbing and sewer before pouring concrete, and then build your walls from there.

While there is little in terms of home interior decoration, the outside is another story. Once you've built the house, you have dozens of items that you may order and have a truck deliver to decorate the outside of the house. Various fences, potted plants, garden furniture, lamps, pavement tiles, hedges, statues, even Christmas decorations! The selection will vary from one house to another, and it is entirely optional, of course, but this allows those that want to customize their houses to do so to an extent. It also raises the resale value of the house, which may come in handy if finances and profits play a bigger role in the future.

It is obvious to me that a lot of time was dedicated to researching how each of those houses are built for real. I'm not merely referring to architectural style, but actual construction methods. For instance, modern houses in various European countries have their walls built from medium concrete masonry over which plaster is spread, very different from North American modern houses where the outside walls are made from wooden frames and isolation before being covered by a layer of smaller bricks or other paneling. These are things I could recognize from my own knowledge on the matter.

Earlier houses involve a lot more material gathering and crafting, a great way to understand how they are really built, and to be introduced to the various tools at your disposal. The mud-brick house will have you use the primitive axe, the mud basket, the different molds, and the furnace. The trapper house will have you master more modern tools such as a chainsaw, a drawknife, a measuring tape, a jigsaw, and a wood-cutting work bench. Such hand-built houses really catered to the crafting gamer in me. There's something that feels genuine in gathering dirt and water, mixing it in a mud ball you put in a mold, and then laying bricks one by one, as opposed to having enough "wood" in your inventory to spawn a fully assembled wall.

Later houses gave me a completely different experience that I found equally enjoyable and relaxing: that of a modern construction worker - not to say the job is easy in real life, but in a computer game, it is kinda soothing. With such houses, you dig and lay the foundation as needed, build up the frame for the walls and roof, and then place and nail in each piece, be it PVC panels, drywall boards, mineral wool, roof soffits, wind boards, etc., all installed one piece at a time! Those jobs make use of a hammer, a screwdriver, a nail gun, and you resort to a delivery truck to order additional supplies.

I can appreciate the effort made by the developers in researching each project, but there are some mistakes. I couldn't help but notice how the wooden suburban house is actually an 18th and 19th century-style Canadian house, the likes of which no one ever builds anymore and which would probably not be up to modern construction laws and standards, and yet it is built entirely of brand new material that didn't actually exist at the time such houses were built. The same thing happens with the Japanese tea house: modern material and tools, but the house is built on wood stumps sitting on round rocks, instead of concrete tiles the way modern Japanese countryside houses are built. We use primitive tools for the igloo and mud-brick house, why is there a missed opportunity in slightly less-primitive but not-quite-modern projects? It's not too late to turn it around and introduce tools and materials from a few centuries ago.

This game obviously targets the niche crowd of "realistic simulator" gamers, looking not for an exciting or thrilling game, but a soothing and relaxing experience of an accurate real-life simulation of the given activity. Yet, the game appears to be afraid of going all-in and quickly streamlines each process, as if it was worried of becoming tedious. For instance: after cutting a few ice blocks for the igloo, you get a skill that makes 2 blocks appear for each block you cut...then 6, then 15! Operating the crane for the concrete prefab? How about using the crane to swing 5 different concrete pieces of different shapes and sizes AT THE SAME TIME! Yeah, that makes sense! It certainly doesn't break the immersion to just swing the suspended parts around until some of them happen to stick to their designated spot! Neither does holding 300 roof tiles in my hands while jumping on up the scaffold like I was on a pogo stick!

Still very rough around the edges, both in terms of graphics and control. Half the time, the nails don't even line up with the actual piece of wood they're nailing. Installing material too quickly (through those speed perks) will often result in the game miscalculating how many pieces you actually laid, forcing me to often order more again and again even though I had the required quantity on the first try (since I was arguing for "realism", one could rub it in by saying that it's wasted material caused by working too fast, but the fact remains that it is a bug, not a voluntary feature!). Clipping issues with the scaffold and decor items, such as birds flying through the roof. It is, of course, to be expected in an Early Access game, so I can't get angry about it, but it doesn't make it a good feature, either! I'd also be more inclined to decorate the houses if I could plant grass and remove remove tools, scaffolds, and vehicles. They added a container to remove excess material, so why not the rest?


All in all, a much better experience that I was led to believe I'd have when I played the House Builder: First Job demo. It isn't finished, needs a lot of polishing, more houses (both primitive and modern), but it is getting regular updates. Whether you want to support further development of this Early Access is up to you, but I certainly am looking forward to future updates with enthusiasm!

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This was just my opinion.

If you found this review helpful, please consider giving it a thumbs up, and feel free to check out more of my (purely opinionated) reviews.

...is an action go-kart racer. Garfield and his friends are taking to the streets to duke it out and find out who's the fastest.

For those unfamiliar with the genre, it can be summarized as a Mario Kart-inspired racing game. You pick from various small soapbox-inspired racing cars and drivers, race across various wacky areas often littered with pitfalls or shortcuts, grabbing power-ups along the way the hinder your opponents or get an advantage. These consist of Throwing Pies (including a guided version) to knock out opponents, Lasagna which gives you a speed boost, the Spring that allows you to jump, the UFOs that will go ahead of the other racers and may entrap one for a short while, and many more.

Your stats consist of speed, acceleration and handling. Each different driver has slightly different stats, and can be equipped with a hat that gives a special advantage over the power-ups: faster Thrown Pie speed, quicker Vroom Perfum boost, etc. In addition to the general hat selection any character can wear, each character has its own unique hat as well. You can unlock bronze, silver and gold hats by completing grand prix campaigns or daily challenges, or collecting enough coins to purchase them.

You also have a selection of cars, again with stats of their own. Each can be paired with a spoiler or an engine, available in bronze, silver or gold versions (again, additional ones being unlocked by completing grand prix or by purchasing them with coins). It is important to note that while you can pair any car with any spoiler, there's a specific car-spoiler combo for each model that gives a much greater boost. Equipping the correct kart and spoiler becomes increasingly important as you progress through higher difficulty races.

I could see a lot of Garfield lore, so to speak, in the art style and locations. Garfield's space helmet, John's cooking hat with mustache, or even locations like the desert with Garfield-headed sphynxes! Reminds me of old cartoons and TV shows. The racing courses are varied in both aesthetics and design: the wooden bridges of Palerock Lake, the twists and turns of Valley of the Kings, the branching paths of Branching Oasis, each course with an identity and style of its own.

There are a lot of collectibles in this game. You only get a handful of coins per race, and the unlocked item from completing a grand prix is randomized, so unlocking every car, spoiler and hat will give you plenty of reason to come back to it. You also have jigsaw puzzle pieces hidden in each track, characters and boosts that are only unlocked by completing certain campaigns at certain difficulty levels, even an entire set of tracks is only available if you completed the first three sets are 150 cc (max difficulty).

No, you'll never mistake Crazy Dunes for City Slicker, but those differences failed to give the courses something to stand out. None of them are memorable. In fact, I would go as far as to say that, besides the Garfield-esque art style, the racing courts are as generic as they come for go-kart racing games. Even the music is forgettable, not a single tune can come to mind no matter how hard I try (maybe with the exception of the main menu theme, because of how repetitive it is).

The randomness of power-ups is biased according to your position in the race. Those running behind will get speed boosts and group-affecting powers, while those in the lead get basic projectiles so they can drop them behind to defend against upcoming attacks. This removes a lot of fairness in the game, and even forces you to be "less good?" if you want to grab certain power-ups like the Spring to reach secret areas. But then again, what good are those secret areas, the only in-course hidden collectibles are jigsaw puzzle that unlocks pictures. If they were concept arts and classics from Jim Davis, it would be one thing, but why would I care for an in-engine picture that can only be viewed from some obscure submenu?


Nothing really stands out in Garfield Kart, but it remains a competent go-kart racer that has no specific reason to be avoided. I enjoyed it and have no regret getting it. However, if you wait for the right Steam Sale, you'll often get its sequel/remake, Garfield Kart: Furious Racing, at an even lower price.

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This was just my opinion.

If you found this review helpful, please consider giving it a thumbs up, and feel free to check out more of my (purely opinionated) reviews.

...is a action-adventure game. Fadia's village is under attack by the Khazdaks, so he takes it upon himself to discover the source of the disease and rid Naria of this threat.

It is a typical top-view adventure game in the veins of classical Zelda games, walking around in all directions (8 directions, actually, since there's no controller support to enable an analog control), attacking in melee with a sword or at a distance with a sling. You can jump across slim gaps or climb ledges of a limited height. There are levers, karts, and other objects that can be interacted with and moved around, whether to smash enemies or to use as platforms.

A crafting system is introduced through the use of resources in a Survo puzzle: a table grid in which you must place the correct resources, and quantity of resources, in each row and columns. Each craftable item will be different (both in terms of puzzle and resource usage). Up to three items you craft often, such as swords or boxes, can be saved to a quick-craft bar so that you may make some on the fly without resorting to solving their puzzles each time.

I found myself very interested in the world and lore the game established. Nothing monumental, but very reminiscent to some Fantasy JRPG storylines. You find story pages along your adventure that adds lore and backstory to a past war against the Khazdaks, and how the people of the village of Naria stood up to save the world against the Disease, creatures that invade and destroy the world following someone being infected by a disease. This seems to set the table for an epic journey through a large world.

While finicky at first, I quickly got used to the game controls. Anyone playing a twin-stick shooter with a mouse and keyboard will see what I mean. With each creature you kill, resources are dropped, but only for crafting recipes you know. This makes sense, as why would you collect a resource you have no idea you need until you actually learn a recipe that uses it? Resources can also be collected by smashing boxes or in chests.

There's a lack of polish across multiple aspects of the game. In addition to controls being very finicky, the entire engine seems to have an issue with detection: hit detection (when attacking enemies, or when enemies attack you), ledge detection (when trying to jump or climb) and floor detection (when jumping across gaps or from a platform to another). Dialog texts are full of typos, translation mistakes, or text that expand beyond the size of the dialog box itself, often missing the last few words or sentences.

I was left speechless when the game ended. Not because of the story, not because of the ending, but because of how short the game was. After fighting an extremely easy boss, I assumed I was done with the introductory tutorial level and getting ready to set out into the world and finally start the real game, but no, that was it! "Wait, what?" That's right, the game was finished! Even the story was pointing to this being the beginning,the town elder speaking of the awakening of the ParVaNeh, as Fadia leaves Naria to save the world from the Khazdak.I mean, there isn't even 2 hours of content, half my Steam playtime being spent figuring out how the game controls and graphical setup worked


Imaging playing Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and, upon leaving Kokiri Forest for the first time, the game was over. That's exactly how ParVaNeh: Legacy of Light's Guardians felt, except for being even shorter. There's no way this should be marketed as a full game. This has got to be a demo for another, larger game that was abandoned. It's not bad, but it's unacceptably short. A real deception.

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This was just my opinion.

If you found this review helpful, please consider giving it a thumbs up, and feel free to check out more of my (purely opinionated) reviews.

...is a 3D platformer puzzle. Bob is sleepwalking in his dreams, and you must guide him away from nightmares and to the comfort of his bed to properly sleep.

Bob sleepwalks in a straight line, turning right whenever he hits an obstacle. Your goal is to place moveable obstacles (giant apples) to direct his walk to the door of his bedroom. If he falls down a pIt, he'll respawn at his starting point. Additional challenges are added in later levels, such as mouths that blows Bob off track, or clocks and dogs that will make him up (instant game over).

The game makes use of surreal landscapes, including impossible shapes and walls, teleporting mirrors, stairs that rotates you into walking on walls. You must navigate these passages to pick up the objects you place before Bob and make sure he gets on his merry way to his bed. For additional challenge, Nightmare Mode will require you to have Bob pick up one or more keys before he can enter his bedroom.

I found the puzzles to be pretty unique, unlike many other platformer puzzles I've seen out there. You can only influence the path Bob will take, and will often find yourself with limited options as narrow platforms and walkways prevent you from placing the giant apples just anywhere if you don't want Bob to fall and restart. Other times, the apple is used to allow Bob to cross a narrow gap, or fish used as bridges for wider gaps. Each nightmare (which wake Bob up) has a different behavior, so while clocks could be made to fall off ledges, the same cannot be said for dogs.

Levels are inspired by famous strange and surreal paintings and drawing, from the melting clocks of Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory, to the impossible staircase of Oscar Reutersvärd's Penrose Steps. Floating eye balls, strange ambiance sounds, the utterly weird voice that comments the level every once in a while, really made this a strange experience.

Something that always frustrates me is a missed opportunity, and this one is quite the example. The presence of impossible shapes is rarely ever used as a gameplay element, except the very occasional times your character must walk on walls to pick up a giant apple. This could have been an extremely memorable puzzle that would make great use of 3D, but it remains ultimately a 2D experience as far as Bob's movements are concerned.

The puzzles are short and rather easy. Not once did I get nervous over the risk Bob was in, and never was I left clueless as to how to succeed, mistakes being caused more by missteps or bad timing on my part that actual puzzle solving challenge. The Nightmare Mode was no different, other than creating further annoyance. The game appears to be aware of this fact, since it includes a fast-forward button to attempt to alleviate the tediousness of waiting on Bob's slow sleepwalking.


I can't say I'm very impressed with the game. It was very stylish and pretty at first, but quickly became rather boring. Variety is limited, quantity of levels as well, and completing the Nightmare Mode just made it feel even more repetitive. Back to Bed isn't my cup of tea, nor something I'll openly recommend.

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This was just my opinion.

If you found this review helpful, please consider giving it a thumbs up, and feel free to check out more of my (purely opinionated) reviews.

...is a time-based resource management puzzle. Returning from vacation, Hercules and Megara find that the land devastated by drought, and must restore it while facing Hercules' doppelganger.

Your goal is to gather food, wood and gold to open paths, fix bridges and overpass several obstacles to achieve specific goals. You can pick up resources on the map, on various spawn points, from cleared obstacles or by exchanging it for other resources from various allies. Each level will also have a hidden puzzle piece, unlocking bonus levels.

Score is awarded based on how much time you have left when you successfully complete the level. Therefore, the challenge is in clearing the various obstacles in the correct order, with quick thinking and quick clicking. Wasting resources at the wrong place means you'll waste time waiting on resource spawning to proceed further.

Part of the strategy relies on investing resources on the right improvement, at the right time. Improve farms for more food, workshops for more wood, mines for more gold and your home for more servants. Improving them, of course, costs resources, so choosing which one to improve and when will affect your progress. You also get access to various abilities (different for each level) to boost worker speed, gather more resources or stop time.

While the fourth iteration of the game, I found the level design more challenging, and this is a good thing, because the whole point of the game is to get a 3-star rating everywhere. Most of the replayability will come from playing the same level multiple time to improve your score, with every second you save getting you closer to your goal.

There's a nice variety of obstacles to remove with different requirements, accumulated from past games, Sure, your servants remain the main tool to remove obstacles, with the occasional involvement of Hercules or Megara, but many others introduced in past games make a return: you'll need Cerberus against ghosts, Medusa against minotaurs, etc. New allies are also introduced to gather resources: Midas trades gold for other resources, Charon picks up driftwood, etc. The variety actually increases the challenge!

If you aren't trying get perfect scores, you won't enjoy this game, even as a casual player. It is impossible to fail a level: on-the-map resources are calculated to make sure you can reach the resource spawn points, so there's no way to misspend your resource to a point you'll be stuck. And no matter how long you wait on resource spawning, there is no base time limit for level completion.

Storytelling has never been the focal point of the series, but it feels like they didn't even try with this one. Besides a short cutscene every 10 levels, most of the levels themselves don't really tell a story, at least not as much as the previous games did. You might go through all 10 levels with no actual progression, and with no effect on gameplay. For instance: When Hercules and Megara are separated, the game simply substitute saplings for stoned saplings, and boulders for titan's teeth, which cancels any gameplay change this could've introduced.


Sure, it's the same basic gameplay, graphics and soundtrack as the previous game, but that's exactly what's wanted by the target audience. This is not so much a sequel as it is a standalone extra level pack for those that enjoyed the previous iterations. If you've never played them, start with the first 12 Labours of Hercules and work your way to this one if you like the genre.

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This was just my opinion.

If you found this review helpful, please consider giving it a thumbs up, and feel free to check out more of my (purely opinionated) reviews.

...is a jigsaw puzzle game. Complete multiple jigsaw puzzles of various sizes and difficulty from photographs of Japanese landscapes.

You get a collection of 19 puzzles across 5 different difficulty levels: the more difficult ones having more, smaller puzzle pieces (from 60 pieces for the easiest ones to 350 pieces for the final, hardest one). Puzzles of higher difficulty are unlocked after completing a few of the currently available puzzles, so you're required to complete the easier ones first.

Jigsaw puzzle pieces float around above and left from the game board. They are always right side up, but move around and across from each other. You simply click and hold a piece and drop it in its appropriate location on the puzzle board. Every couple of placed pieces, you get a gold point, eight of which allows you to see the full picture on the board to better determine where to place the remaining pieces.

There's a nice variety of photographs, varying from countryside, castles, flower gardens, and other vintage or classical locations from Japan.The whole thing accompanied by calm, if cliché, Japanese-sounding music and sound effects.

Pieces have different interlocks from one puzzle to another, from the usual bumps to triangles and other angled stub, keeping you alert on how pieces lock together with each new jigsaw board.

Photographs are low-resolution, even blurry in places, nothing clear or sharp. I get better picture quality on my ChromeCast's screensaver. For a paid game, I would expect higher resolution images that allows me to make out what the image on pieces are. This makes it extremely hard to figure out where the pieces go when, for instance, half the picture consists of blurry rose-colored tree branches. As a result, enjoyment makes place to frustration when attempting to complete the puzzles. The loose pieces are shrunk down to a half inch, and move around the pond, making it terribly hard to see the pieces and find the ones you're looking for. When floating, pieces keep moving above each other, and I've often had to pick and drop over a dozen pieces to finally grab the one I was trying to pick.

You can't snap pieces together, even if you know they go together. They can only snap to their exact location on the board. On the other hand, by dragging and dropping pieces at random on the board, you might accidentally have it locked on its location without any other piece surrounding it, even though you had no idea it went there. And if you're trying to legitimately determine where the picture goes, you have to get those randomly-granted gold pieces to see the original image, which you only get if you placed pieces correctly, something that's hard to do specifically if you're having a hard time completing the puzzle.


This isn't the first game I try from the Pixel Puzzles collection, but it is by far the worst. How could I possibly tell anyone to pay for a game that is immensely inferior to free websites like Jigidi? Don't touch this one with a ten-foot pole.

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This was just my opinion.

If you found this review helpful, please consider giving it a thumbs up, and feel free to check out more of my (purely opinionated) reviews.