Recent reviews by BinarySplit

The world needs more kobold games

Really good! Puzzles were just the right difficulty, escalating over the course of the game. Highly recommended!

Another amazing story from Wadjet Eye. This had me hooked till the end!

This game would have been so incredible without the roguelike aspect. It's so luck-dependent. It's as if they've tuned the house-building / item collecting aspect to eat as much of your time as possible.

Even using Cheat Engine to remove the resource management mechanics that will otherwise kill more than half of your runs, it still takes so much time to make any progress because you have to regain all your resources at the start of every day.

EDIT: Got quite a bit further (1 blue crown, 3 chamber keys, 1 sigil entered and postcard read), with cheats though. This would take so much longer without cheats. The story and puzzles were great while they was the focus of the game, but now I'm over 25 hours in and the game should be wrapping up. Instead, my next steps would rely on spending hours at a time grinding that RNG to make a tiny bit of progress and gah. No. I have to move on with my life.

I implore the developer: Please patch in mechanics or a new mode that takes the edge off the grind: allow some inventory to be unconditionally kept between days, allow rebuilding a few rooms without discarding the house. More people would finish this incredible experience if it had less grind.

Unless you're a huge fan of the genre, I suggest wishlisting this and waiting for it to come out. At the moment it doesn't live up to its price. I'm reviewing positively because I see the vision, and they've already built enough that it feels likely they'll make it out of EA.

There are many moments of great atmosphere, level design, and gameplay. It's like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. set in the E.Y.E. universe and I love it. But, there were also MANY "is this area not developed yet, or am I stupid and just not seeing where to go?" moments. In its current state, it demands a lot of patience.

It's captivating. It has the great characters and world-building of a top-tier VN, but with a point&click gameplay loop to hold your attention. I can't describe the story. It's nothing like anything I've read before.

I haven't felt this immersively simulated since System Shock (the original). This is peak 0451. There are so many game mechanics and unexpected details to delight you, and the story isn't like any I've seen before. It's hard to believe this was made by just 1-2 devs.

It's EA and unfinished and the dev is sadly going away for a while, but what's there is worth it. Highly recommended for fans of the ImSim genre.

Great escape room game! The puzzles had a perfect mix of difficulties, the story was well written, the environmental detail was great.

I admit to using the guide a few times. IMO, all of the puzzles were fair, but 2 (piano, and the proper order of keys) really stumped me. In retrospect I could have found them if I had systematically reviewed all the available environmental clues, but I was feeling impatient today. On a better day, those could have been very satisfying to solve.

My only complaint: missable achievements in the middle of the game, with no chapter select. To get 100% achievements, I'd need to replay it from the start just to get to a couple small easter eggs. Not a fun way to spend 2+ hours.

"I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding."[x.com] - very much echoes my sentiment. I like these kinds of experimental small-scale games, as long as they respect my time (i.e. no unnecessary grind), which ASTRA certainly does.

It tells an interesting story, supported by good world-building, graphics and music. It didn't overstay its welcome, and ended on a high note.

I enjoyed it and feel it's the right price, but YSK before buying: it's only ~75 minutes including optional sidequests, and the character customization is exactly what you see in the description: 3 stats with 3 levels each, some options for appearance, and a tiny selection of items/equipment. Don't go in expecting a Morrowind or Dread Delusion level of depth.

Not for me, but a good game worthy of consideration.

I was drawn in by the story and the promise of a factory-building game that wrapped up in 20 hours and didn't try to eat my life. The exploration & factory-building was reasonably fun, and the story was intriguing, but the pacing quickly exhausted me.

The main quest feels slower and slower as the game progresses, requiring more walking, more resource gathering, etc. for less story with each objective. The most frustrating part was how the tech tree doesn't really build on itself. It never felt worthwhile investing time in making a tidy, high-production factory for one component, as many components are used for one objective and never again. Anyway, I'm a particularly impatient gamer. Other people probably won't find this as bad as I did.

If you consider yourself relatively patient, you'll probably enjoy this.