Recent reviews by constantcompile

A Short Hike is a very wholesome, very charming game featuring simple graphics and a cohesive aesthetic (you can turn off the pixellated look in the graphics settings if you wish). The visual comparison to Animal Crossing really is unavoidable - clearly an homage at the very least - but with a sense of mobility and freedom that those games sorely lack.

The "villagers" in this game also have a sassiness to them that players nostalgic for the Gamecube era will much appreciate - the humor in this game is well-done, I was reminded of Donut County.

I completed A Short Hike in about three and a half hours and thoroughly enjoyed my time with it.

Highly Recommended.

For $2, In less than 10 hours, I completed a dozen or more satisfying 4X campaigns, using nine races that all felt distinct.

The complaints about this game are valid: the single-click interface seems touchscreen-optimized, some information could be better complained to the player, and the game isn't completely stable (I experienced one CTD in my time playing). And, yes, RNG might necessitate a seed re-roll, but that's hard to be mad about if you've only lost ten minutes by the time you recognize the problem.

However, all of the decisions you make in this game are fundamentally 4X. Do I expand and stretch myself thin, or make my existing domain more robust? Do I build out my military to earn points through combat, or just double-down on research to earn points through completing the tech tree? Mini Gal4Xy delivers the 4X experience in a bite-sized package, without the accompanying feeling that you're missing out on the "real" game because you don't have the time for or interest in devoting weeks or months of your life to hundreds of hours of a marathon campaign.

I wish there were more games like this.

Recommended.

Frost is a fascinating game by a French dev team. It is also soul-crushingly difficult. If you play, you will absolutely encounter deaths that feel unfair and undeserved, because RNG plays a heavy role and it frequently seems biased against your success.

As weird as it is to say I played it for the story I found the narrative of the world profoundly interesting. Different characters have different philosophies and perspectives on what the Frost is, ranging from a creation of man (is the setting prehistoric or post-apocalyptic?) to existential dread itself. Imagining what the card interactions represent sparked my imagination many times, and the in-universe story of my character leading their survivors frequently took twists and turns worthy of a novel.

I've now reached two diametrically opposed endgame states: On one hand, the Frigomancer - a character you unlock after several others - is gloriously OP and allows me to stomp the RNG very satisfyingly. On the other hand, the Skeptic - unlocked right after the Frigomancer - is mediocre power-wise but has an absolute death march of a scenario, which is long and unfairly-difficult enough to prevent me from 100%ing the game (and save-scumming isn't possible - believe me, I've tried).

Those who know me will know that me recommending this game in spite of that, and in spite of a never-patched glitch that will end a run if you leave your game after unlocking the next region, speaks to how highly I think of Frost.

I highly recommend that you at least try the free demo, and see if you vibe with the game. If you do, there's a lot for you here.

Of all the games in the Atmospheric Puzzle Bundle, Path of Giants was the game wherein I most frequently took a moment to stop and think, "What am I trying to do, here? What steps need to be completed in what order to complete the level?"

It also looks and sounds very pleasant - your little jawa dudes hop around the terrain convincingly, and the environmental art is quite nice.

I completed it in about 4 hours and that time was consistently engaging. The "View Stats" button on the Level Select page helps you button-up those last few goals.

Highly recommended.

Real talk, the aesthetic and soundtrack of Golf Peaks is half the reason to play it. Watch the two trailers with sound on, and follow your instinct.

Personally, I liked the game so much that I bought it on the Nintendo Switch after finishing it on Steam, because I just wanted more. As small-scale puzzlers go, this one actually has quite a lot of content. And the content is good - genuinely difficult puzzles that require thought and consideration. I was honestly stumped by a couple of them.

Probably worth the money even at full price.

Recommended.

Hey, there's always room in my Steam library for another small-scale indie puzzle game with a novel mechanic. In Spring Falls, you play as the forces of erosion, probably, deciding which rock surrounding some water gets worn down first.

There's a very clear divide between the levels meant to teach you mechanics and the levels meant to test your knowledge. Like many small-scale puzzlers, most of the levels will probably come off as "too easy" if you brute-force the limited number of likely moves in different orders; if you want a challenge, you'll need to self-impose the restriction of aiming for fewest attempts, rather than shortest time. Really trying to think through the consequences of your actions and planning a few steps ahead is where the gameplay shines, and over-reliance on the undo button undercuts that.

Will it blow your mind? Unlikely. Should you get it on sale? Yeah. Still good, though? Sure. And if you like this one, I'd say go ahead and pick up the Atmospheric Bundle on the Store page.

Recommended.

GOTY 2020. Best roguelike I've played.

Carto is a clever, good-spirited little game with occasionally challenging puzzles and an uplifting story.

I beat it in less than six hours, I probably could have 100%'d it if I'd used the minimally-spoilerish guide available. (Edit: 100%'d it under 7 hours with the guide's help.)

Highly recommended.

Five years ago, Daniel West posted a post-mortem on Gamasutra about his game, Airscape: The Fall of Gravity. The title of the post-mortem read: "Good isn't good enough - releasing an indie game in 2015". It argued that new titles were so abundant nowadays that if your game was merely "good," it would receive little fanfare and be passed over in favor of more talked-about titles.

Magnia is a good game. But it's not a great one. The 3D light puzzle mechanic consists of piecing together toys and other objects, and it's... fine. The lack of control over the Z-Axis makes some angles fiddly to work with. Sometimes you'll have a satisfying mental "click" when you've figured out how some pieces fit together. The sticks and rings, though, as well as the towers, are so basic that they really feel like you're just going through the motions. The ballista is kinda neat, but the catapult seems buggy and inconsistent.

As of a few days ago, the full price of this game was reduced to $0.99, and for that price the gameplay seems well worth it. If you want a light, casual puzzler, I'd say pick this up.

Achievement hunters, do note that I wasn't able to get two of the achievements to pop. Otherwise, recommended.

I 100%'d Space Crew in about 20 hours, and it's clear to me that a lot of love and effort has been put into it.

The problem, IMO, is that Runner Duck hadn't put enough thought and play-testing into the early game. Although it's a crew management game in the vein of FTL: Faster Than Light, the rhythm of gameplay in Space Crew feels more akin to a Tower Defense title like Kingdom Rush. Moment-to-moment decisions primarily revolve around when to use skills that have cooldown timers, and that means that in the early game - when you've unlocked barely any skills, weapons or upgrades - gameplay mainly consists of raging at your crewmembers for being terrible shots.

Once I was a few hours in, and had unlocked more skills - and perhaps more importantly, the railgun - the gameplay clicked into place and everything felt right. I certainly appreciate the latest patch giving the crewmembers better aim, but I suspect Easy difficulty usage among players will largely taper off several hours in. Oh, and concerning the penalty for ship-wiping being too harsh: 1. You only lose a few missions' worth of upgrades, and 2. You always have the option of exiting to the Main Menu and reloading your save, effectively "save-scumming" if things are going south.

All right, so that's a lot of text about the difficulty. How's the rest of the game? Pretty darn good for a $20 title, I'd say. Let's go back to the Tower Defense comparison for a moment. Like TD games, there's a seemingly endless number of baddies to serve as cannon fodder for your cannons, but once you're set in your optimized strategy and loadout, things can start to feel "samey" rather quickly. In terms of content across missions, things move at a brisk pace; beautiful new vistas and clever game concepts are introduced regularly. The problem is that within each mission, you're required to slog through 4-8 sectors of wave-based combat. By the end of the game, I was so sick of the combat that I'd browse my phone while keeping an eye on my cooldown timers, and that's a real shame. To be clear, though, this is a common problem in most games for me; the game stretches on for so long that the core loop starts to feel like filler. My recommendation would be to cut unlock requirements by 20% across the board, and to significantly reduce the number of combat encounters per mission, especially when returning to base.

Overall, I'd say Space Crew is a worthy spiritual successor to Bomber Crew. Like Bomber Crew, it feels too long. Like Bomber Crew, I shamelessly save-scummed my way through the harder bits. But, like Bomber Crew, I enjoyed my time with it and felt like it was worth the money I spent on it.

Recommended.