Recent reviews by Zephyrtf

fantastic pixel art, fantastic game design, just a fantastic game worth your time.

Short, but doesn't overstay its welcome as a result. reminds me of portal 1, strong mind-hurty concept and a slight bit of the same mad science angle to boot. took me about 2 or so hours to beat at a leisurely pace, much less if I hadn't spent so much time dinking about with a side-area.

Very much more a narrative experience than a game experience. Visuals are a fantastically immersive peek into what a machine-learning brain scan would look like, accentuated by hours of audio and reading on a very fascinating fictional technology.

Unfortunately, it is held back slightly by somewhat shallow puzzles and the visual spectacle sometimes making it unclear what you're supposed to be doing. I'm also going to say it feels like its a chapter shorter than its supposed to be, cutting off the story rather abruptly with some strange twists.
Overall though, the amount of thought put in absolutely warrants the purchase, though the walking simulator nature of it may put many others off. If that's a gameplay concern that bothers you, do avoid it. Otherwise, get on this for some really excellent speculative tech fiction.

Absolutely worth it for the art alone. Game's kinda stiff and, in my opinion, generically designed as a platformer, but a nice game regardless.

Very cute, very short game. Expect to finish it in about an afternoon.

The animation is all kinds of charming, utilizing boiling lines and wild camera angles to sell a very off-kilter cartoony vibe that I would love to see on tv.

The characters are all goofy cute characters with expressive movements and funny lines.

The one con I would give this game is that it can be easy to softlock. Try to avoid interrupting cutscenes with another character, it happened to me a few times in the restaurant.

(Also there's a slide puzzle, and those suck lol)

The game is kinda slow, aiming is unreliable, and movement feels remarkably stiff. It feels like there's half a game here even with the dlc, and it's not worth the price of admission.

this is just barely a reccomendation.

The game has a very nice story for realistic sci-fi nuts, very "2001 a space odyssy" or "Gravity" in terms of tone, complete with a number of surprisingly convincing portrayals of modern-adjacent space tech.

However, some of the puzzles can be a bit obtuse (looking at you, command override), one particular plot point doesn't make a terrible amount of sense, and there are ABSOLUTELY MISSABLE LORE TABLETS when you hit a new area. BE AWARE OF THAT, SPOILERS OR NOT I MISSED EXACTLY ONE THING AND OF _COURSE_ THAT'S WHERE IT WAS. when a dude starts telling you to go away that's your point of no return, REMEMBER THIS.

Other nitpicks: Controlling the observation sphere is terrible, would have been far better as a free-cam mouse control scheme. Cameras move so damn slow that it actuallly gets really annoying. Game doesn't really value your time a whole lot, relies on patience you may not have.

OVERALL: 6/10, it's aight. Good story and visuals account for all 6 of those points.

New beta adds a lot of quality of life fixings, and while I'll miss the wall-launching mechanic I think the new changes are worth losing it. It'd be better with it though, GIMME IT BACK

short and low-effort to the point 10 bucks is actually asking too much, imo. Pretty standard walking simulator with rough-shot pixel graphics and so many filters that it's actually hard to look at without getting motion-sick. Render distance is strangely abysmal for something that looks like a ps1 beta, which doesn't help when graphics are swimming in and out of existence.

The game is bogged down by a pretty lame "genderswap" mechanic that messes with the UI if you don't "change genders" using expensive consumable items, and there's really only one "quest" in the entire game. this is annoying both as an activist and as a gameplay consideration, the former because apparently gender is a joke to the creator to the point it feels either out of touch or mean-spirited. There could have been an interesting story mechanic about dealing with dysphoria, but as it is it's just a glitchy interface aesthetic that blocks you from knowing if you're hungry or not.

It would work as a relaxing walkaround game, if not for the bad graphics. The options upon booting the game are "bad" and "worse" and you should really trust that assessment.

The actual gameplay loop mostly revolves around collecting pittances for resold trash to cure yourself of a cursed skull. That seems like it would just be the first of a few questlines, but... well, that's really it. You get rid of a skull and that's the end of the game. It stinks because there's the makings of a cool setting here to explore from the sidelines and it just doesn't deliver on that interesting premise.

AI is basic to the point of non-existence, they're just gif images that walk about and get caught up in each other in immersion-shattering clumps of bad pathing AI, and there's annoying soldier characters that will come up to you and eat your money sometimes, which was effective the first time and just annoying all subsequent times.

overall, this wasn't really worth my time. The game needed a lot more than it had, and it sucks because some of the writing here is genuinely charming. Item descriptions are funny, but it's all so shallow as to make me not care what happens to my blobby little janitor drone.

First impressions on this game were "wait, this isn't doom 2016! Why is there a cutscene? why does it feel slower to move? why are there so many damn tutorials? LET ME PLAY THE GAME!"

I won't lie to you, you're going to have to get past that first impression to get to what is, in my opinion, the best shooter of the year. And you're going to have to do a lot more than you were doing in doom 2016 to boot.

Weapon switching is now a must, and you HAVE to keep track of what weapons you're holding so you can take care of specific enemies with specific guns. Each demon now has a weak point, and each weak point is best attacked with a different tool. Cacodemons? throwing grenades into their open mouths will stun them for a glory kill. Revenants? blowing up their rocket launchers makes them way less of a threat. Jobber enemies? a single headshot from the machine gun and they'll be stunned for a quick health or ammo top-up.

However, ammo is way more limited, and while you can get upgrades pretty fast to fix that just like the original it's DEFINITELY a bit irritating on the first couple levels.

Overall, 9/10 game. Don't let the first impressions fool you, by level 3 it's smooth sailing.

(Also, there's a bug where if you have your mouse and keyboard plugged into a usb 2 slot sometimes they'll stop working for a moment mid-combat. Make sure you have your controls stuck into the right slot and you'll be good.)