Recent reviews by Cosmic Engine

Great art style with some good voice acting, story and sound. The game really suffers from being a mobile port and has an infuraiting control scheme with some loose mechanics that need to be worked on.

Full Video Review

https://youtu.be/rFeSGo2O8Bw

Video Review

https://youtu.be/38-u4pik1cs

Written Review

There are several playable characters to choose a team from which for most levels allows you to select four to take on a job. Each character has a set of specific skills for example Cleopatra runs faster than all other and can also run through laser beams whereas Bishop as the locksmith is the only one who can pick locks without tools. The characters are all useful in certain levels and selecting your crew comes down to your own play style as well as the various puzzles that will be faced.

Something which I personally enjoyed was the planning phase for a level which works similar to the old rainbow six games in which you can carefully view the blueprints of the level to see what you’ll be up against. In this phase you can scout the level, select your crew and then equip them. There is a variety of equipment available to outfit your thieves with, each costs money from the pool of cash you earn from each successful heist. Each character can only carry three items at any one time which forces you to plan ahead but equipment can also be found in the level. Items range from crowbars to unlock doors and strongboxes, to chloroform for taking out guards. As the game progresses you’ll gain access to more characters and equipment to play around with which then you can take to the challenge mode to replay older missions with new characters.

Once done with planning, the level will start in paused mode in which you can path out your first moves. While the pathing sounds like it makes the game easy, you will often have to pause to make quick changes due to changing guard patterns. One of the key difficulty mechanics is timing, timing your movements, flicking of switches and lock picking of doors is crucial which makes the levels tenser. With patrolling guards, cameras, lasers, switch doors and more, timing and the team work of your crew is essential for not getting caught. Each level has two failure states, first is the heat bar which increases each time you are seen by a guard or device. The second is being arrested by a guard which results in an instant game over.

The levels are fairly enjoyable and there is a decent progression of difficulty in the puzzles. The pathing suffers some problems occasionally with mis-clicks and it can become a little finicky when setting up various actions. The art style of the game works well, its 70’s style is reinforced with the use of vibrant colors. There’s some nice art assets in the game however I personally disliked the use of large icons for items in levels. While the game certainly is not graphically impressive it does a decent job of looking attractive, some animations like walking through doors are odd and could have been much better.

The games soundtrack has a good mix of 70’s style music that’s fun to listen too. Like I’ve said the voice acting isn’t too bad the major issues with both audio and graphically is that there is a host of bugs, while I have not encountered anything game breaking, the audio has bugged out on almost every level with frequent pops or turning on and off. There are frequent graphically problems with clipping, lighting issues, paths being showing even after you’ve deleted them and more. It’s pretty buggy but theres little in the way of game hampering stuff.

Overall Crookz is a decent stealth tactical heist game, I feel it’s over simplistic in places and could have done with being a lot more difficult especially when there is only 18 levels. I personally would have liked larger levels with more emergent gameplay and fewer of the more linear levels however the range the game offers is not bad. While the challenge mode offers the game a little life line in terms of longevity I think a map editor for players to create and play each other’s maps would have been a really beneficial mode for this game. There’s around 10+ hours of game to play if you’re terrible at the game like me however I imagine you could get the single player campaign completed in just less than 10. The game is of a good quality and at $30 the game will satisfy fans of tactical stealth games however if you’re unsure at what you’ve seen I would certainly wait for a sale.

https://youtu.be/-ZdnWlWLF-4

The combat is a simple turn based hex system that simply requires you to attack and defend. The combat is the biggest let down of the entire game. Unlike most turn based combat games, you don’t have freedom of movement. Instead you can only move when you want to attack a target. There’s no tactical positioning or moving your units out of range of archers. All that is every required in combat is a few simple clicks and while there are unit abilities and some spells, there is very little in terms of actual tactical depth. The sheer lack of freedom of movement in the combat can really hinder you at points, it means you can’t have your spearman on the right flank just move over to the left to defend against a mounted foe, instead the enemies closest to them, even if they are a couple of hexes away must be cleared out first.

The over world works in real time, as you move so do others, time can be stopped, slowed or sped up at convenience. The overworld brings back found memories of the Heroes of Might and Magic series, legends pulls it all of well, with great landscapes and graphical assets. While the movement is slow, the developers have done a good job of making the world look alive. Characters have different routines, which are also affected by quests and the day/night cycle. For example, if you’re hunting down a thief, it’s likely you won’t find him during the day. Instead you’ll have to lay in wait, fast forward time and wait for him to come out at night. The movement is fairly slow on the overworld which can get pretty irritating when you’re trying to catch up with a certain character.

The questing in Legends is a mixed bag of both relatively ok quests and some that are fairly tedious endeavors. The major issue for me was the lack of any meaningful choice system in the game which I certainly felt was due to the lack of creativity quest wise. The majority of main quests consist of running around to talk to a few people and a fight and that’s it, it’s all pretty much rinse and repeat after that in various forms. Questing in legends provides a shallow experience, there’s really very little depth to it, however what it lacks in quality it makes up in quantity. There’s a lot to do in the game and some of it I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. This was thanks the vague quest instructions, which don’t get me wrong, I love figuring things out for myself and dislike games that hand hold the entire way through, however the obscurity of the quests were bad and artificially elongated quests that would have otherwise been very short, it also adds artificial difficulty to simple things.

Now like I mentioned the games story isn’t bad if you can forgive the odd writing at times. However with there are a couple of uncomfortable moments by modern standards in there such as some remarks against Jews that certainly could be considered as Anti-sematic, do I think the developers are racist? No of course not. It’s clear they tried to reflect the times however the small remarks to other races add nothing to the actual setting and story and could have gone amiss.
Graphically, Legends of Eisenwald does well, it’s not terrible to look at and the character models are done fairly well. The character animations look off and janky on occasion particularly in combat. The art style of the game could have done with a little more color as everything is done in a dark shade of color with little actual vibrancy. It’s not that a darker tone is bad, it’s that mixed with the shallow mechanics, it makes the game look bland and ugly in places, when it doesn’t need to be. The most disappointing side of the art was the lack of character assets with soldiers all looking like clone troopers from star wars. Each character looks of that class looks the exact same, for example three monks are identical clones which breaks any and all immersion when in combat. The soundtrack of the game isn’t bad but doesn’t particularly stand out in anyway, the only thing that did stand out about the audio was the few bugs that would cause the audio to go off.

Overall Legends of Eisenwald has a lot of content but lacks any depth to its mechanics. It’s rough around the edges but does hold a certain charm to it. It’s certainly entertaining and packs plenty of hours in there to get your monies worth. I think people looking for an RPG with more depth to progression, combat and certainly a better quality story may wish to wait for a sale before buying Legends

Video Review with written review below.

https://youtu.be/MNLAHdfXlbQ

Pros
- Story.
- Great visuals, vivid world.
- Soundtrack.

Cons
- No failure state.
- Very short.
- Linear in places.
- Repetative.

Submerged brings in to question what constitutes a game. Some people would argue that without a failure state, it isn’t a game. I however would argue that it is, it has more depth mechanically than more basic exploration games that have been in the debate like Dear Ester. To be honest I dislike people trying to determine what a game is, instead of fostering new virtual experiences.

Whether or not Submerged is a game is in fact not the issue. The main issue submerged has is its repetitive gameplay, climbing sections are not difficult and are the same assets repeated over and over. While the environment looks great, the same ledges are used again and again and there’s very little diversity in the gameplay. The fact that the climbing sections are mostly linear with a few diverting paths to find story cards is also a disappointment again causing almost boorish sections.

The lack of a failure state is a mistake in my opinion, having the danger of falling from a building into the water would have been a good one. The developers were quoted in saying that the threat of death detracted from the serene environment, however I have to disagree, you can have both a beautiful and deadly environment.

The games graphics are wonderful, creating a vivid environment. The concreate and glass buildings overgrown with plant life mixed with a blue and green sea is great too explore and look at. Character models also look impressive although the animations are a little off on occasion. There is very little to complain about visually from submerged, the visuals create an immersive environment that begs to be expanded.

Overall Submerged is a beautiful looking game that lacks depth when it comes down to its mechanics. The game is a short lived one with the main campaign only taking around two hours to complete. Submerged certainly has its merits in its world design, visuals, sound and story to some degree. It is however severely let down by its design choices in both lack of a failure state and the level disng of the climbing sections. I personally enjoyed it, I thought it was a fun little game that had charm and as someone who hates tedious climbing sections, I found the simpliticity of the game fun for me however if you are someone who likes more diversity and depth to climbing puzzles and to games overall, its highly probably that you may wish to try submerged in a sale, if indeed at all.

KYN Review

http://youtu.be/T5qBT-6pKNs

KYN focuses on a combination of tactical real time strategy with hack and slash. The games combat takes place in real time however has the ability for you to slow down time for a more tactical view of the battle, allowing you to issue order to each character then resume normal time. The bled of tactical combat with more fast paced action combat works really well, it allows you to plow through a group of weaker enemies fast but then take the time required to deal with tougher foes.

There is a good enemy variety in the game and most will require tactics to take down. Enemies like units that have shields cannot be attacked from the front so it’s often best to have a character attack from the front while the other go round the back to do the damage. There are some huge enemies will some devastating attacks not to mention the hordes of smaller foes you’ll be up against. The enemy variety keeps the game fresh and group battles can become extremely tense not to mention chaotic. In fact when you’re facing a large amount of enemies that when you really begin to appreciate the slow time ability to give you a chance to issue orders and position your party for maximum effectiveness. Overall the combat is fun and works well, it has it’s downsides in that in can be clumsy but for the most part it keeps you going by providing some good challenge.

The story of the game is ok, its nothing particularly memorable but it serves it purpose. The most disappointing thing about the game for me was the writing. It was poor at best, characters all spoke like children and while the occasional joke was funny, the majority of the text was cringe worthy. It cannot be overstated how bad the games dialogue is. The major issue with the poor dialogue is that with the games chosen art style particularly for the characters being somewhat cute cartoonish, it makes the game come across as somewhat childish in a bad way almost as if the dialogue was written by a 13 year old English student.

Overall if you like action RPG's with a tactical element thrown in then KYN is a good choice. It's a pretty good indie game that is let down by its story and writing but makes up in its combat and visuals.

http://youtu.be/4vOzKPi8r_M

Icy focuses on narratively driven gameplay mixed with resource management and RPG progression. It is primarily a text based adventure with artwork to add the visual experience. Indeed it reminds me of a modernized old school MUD. There is a lot of text in the game and it’s something that must be read to really get invested in the characters and story which is really what the game is all about. ICY focuses heavily on choices, each choice you make will have a consequence and some will even effect the games ending as there are multiple endings to experience.

The game does have quite a few bugs in its current state. Occasionally situations mismatch such as a party member falling off a cliff in a 1 story building. The UI can be unresponsive and there is not hover mouse system for the inventory so you actually have to click on something to find out what it is. The whole game is clearly designed for a mobile port and it lacks the cohesion it needs in terms of the UI for a mouse a keyboard.

If you like narratively driven games and don’t mind reading a lot of text then I can imagine you would enjoy Icy however other than that I would suggest avoiding it as I can see where people would get very frustrated at a lot of its core design. It’s7 not a bad little indie game by any means but it sure has its problems and I feel that a good amount of voice acting would have gone a long way to massively improving the narrative.

https://youtu.be/uYVuJsa4Hck

The major addition to the game in the full version since early access is the addition of the main single player story. The game is packed with humor and doesn’t take its setting or story particularly seriously. The voice of the main character will be instantly recognized as Doug Cockle, the voice actor who also voices The Witcher’s Geralt of rivia. The game doesn’t hide this fact with lines making references to the Witcher and with Vran himself sounding exactly like the other monster hunter in an overtly silly way. The games humor is a nice touch and works very well in some places. The voice acting is all done well, even the intentionally cheesy elements, the star of the show however is the voice inside Vran’s head who acts as a narrator in everything you do and will comment on what you’re doing. The narrator is a blend of the narrator from bastion but with the personality of Borderlands 2 handsome Jack providing a dark humor to all the narration for example calling victor Vicky throughout.

Online co-op is featured which I think is a huge benefit to the game. ARPG's in general are one of the only genres where co-op modes not only work well but can provide huge benefits and personal enjoyment. Victor Vrans online mode works well and will the fast paced combat a lot of fun can be had playing with others online. It’s one of those few games that’s good in both short bursts and long play sessions and it’s a game that keeps you engaged throughout.

The core mechanics of the game while simplistic are fun and addictive, it goes to show that a game doesn’t need to be complex to have large amounts of both playability and fun. The ARPG genre is a popular genre but there’s few massive hits out there, even fewer with a high standard of quality in all aspects of the game. Victor Vran is one of those rare games, it has quality and quantity. The story is well written packed with humor and irony designed to poke fun at itself and various fantasy games.

Mind-numbing drudgery.

https://youtu.be/neX-MdGu7aw

Massive Chalice borrows from the popularity of Game of Thrones by putting in bloodline houses. Only people of special bloodlines can fight the cadence. These bloodlines come in the form of houses, each with their own name, banner, motto and castle name. Houses are completely cosmetic and at the start of the game you are able to choose five to be your vanguard at the start. It’s a nice little aesthetical feature that tries to make you care about your characters. The problem is it doesn’t work, because you progress through the game in years, passing ten years is nothing meaning that your characters die often of old age. In fact characters die so much that unlike a game like X-Com where you really care when someone dies because you have spent a lot of time investing in their abilities and appearance. In Massive chalice, the games time progression and lack of character customization means that you become numb to characters. It was to the point that I did not care to learn their names and rather solely based their usefulness on their age, level and traits.

Permadeath by its nature is only an impacting mechanic if you care about the death. Massive Chalice’s core design almost forces you not to care about your units. Because time passes so quickly it means that characters never really level up to a significant point so they never become irreplaceable. In fact the game design makes units become as meaningful as pawns on a chess board. They are very useful but highly expendable and you don’t put much stock in them as you do the other pieces.

Ruling your nation is very simplistic and keeps the focuses on making sure you have enough babies being born to provide soldiers in the coming years. It’s a case of building castles to house bloodlines and produce children, building the occasional building that helps with research or training and of course researching new technology. Researching tech allows you to unlock new weapons, items and armor, it’s also where you can recruit a batch of heroes if you’re running low on troops and it’s the tab where you build the few buildings available. There isn’t much in terms of choice when it comes to new weapons and armor, there’s a couple of interesting items that you can research once a certain number of enemies have been defeated. These items tend to share a trait that relate to the monsters it requires such as the boneshell armor that covers your soldier in a protective shell after one hit like the Bulwark monster.

The UI in the overworld parts of the game looks and responds like a touch screen port. The UI is overly large, bulky and provides no feedback upon clicking it. It’s almost as if the overworld UI design was made with the thought of a mobile release in mind, and to be honest this wouldn’t be very surprising. It does however leave a negative impact on the game, it stands out as not being the correct UI for a PC game, the size of the menus is a perfect size for a touch screen, not for a 2080p monitor with a mouse a keyboard.

Massive Chalices combat is modeled from similar games like X-Com. The game does not really do anything unique or particularly innovative with combat but it’s a solid tried and tested system that works well. There is a variety of factors in battle you must think about which usually comes from the combination of monster mechanics and the variety of armor and weapon effects. Sadly there is not a large amount of variety in enemies. Each enemy has a unique mechanic tied to it such as wrinklers who will add age onto a character if they successfully hit or lapses who if they hit you drain you of XP which can lower your level mid battle which will cause you to lose abilities. The problem with the enemies rears its head later on in the game when you’re just facing the same enemies over and over and the game just throws ever increasing numbers of them at you to try and make battles difficult.

The game is just a characterless husk, it works sufficiently well in terms of stability but gives no immersive experience. Double fine tries to put in charm with the voice acting of the magical chalice but it fails to charm and instead only serves to annoy and make you cringe. Massive Chalice is light on its content which was surprising when you span three hundred years and it simply does not stand up to games like X-Com. It has promising ideas that were not explored properly which are also spoilt by conservative combat design and a garish aesthetic. It is certainly not something I would play again and people looking for a X-Com like experience from this should instead just go play X-Com. It’s a sad, deflated disappointment from Double Fine, who have once again turned a promising idea into mind-numbing drudgery.

Guild Of Dungeoneering Review

https://youtu.be/0tXPihV9L5w

Guild Of Dungeoneering is the new card-battling, dungeon-building game from indie developer Gambrinous. Taking inspiration from games like Dungeon Keeper, players must build the dungeon around the hero, luring them to the objectives and ensuring that they have faced enough monsters and gathered enough equipment to survive. You bribe, entice, and guide your heroes through dungeons without actually being able to control them directly.

Control wise the game is all clicking and some dragging and dropping. There’s not much to it control wise and by looking at the UI design it has without a doubt been designed for an easy mobile port in the future. I actually think that it would be a perfect game for a mobile port and would do well on iOS and mobile devices. It’s glaringly obvious that the game was created with a mobile version in mind which usually means the PC version can suffer. In terms of usability it doesn’t however the UI can occasionally be unresponsive when clicking a button. However the developers don’t seem to have sacrificed anything from the game to make it touch screen friendly.

It’s a game that’s packed with humor, including a narrator that sings in poetic verse as you get your minions killed, horde for loot, and kill infamous creatures. The game comments on the RPG genre with humor in every aspect, from art design to the hero classes themselves. For example, the Barbarian class in RPG’s is as overused and old as RPG’s themselves, and thus the barbarian in the game is an old man or woman who frequently complains or stops for a cup of tea.

I enjoyed the games cute minimalist art style, the background white graph paper with the pencil shaded graphics not only look good but give reinforce the humor feel to the game. Much of the game is just white and gray but the use of occasional color with vivid reds and blues does work well. The sound of the game is great with the voice acting and the medieval style music working hand in hand. The humour of the game really shines through in the sound design and the only criticism I would have of it is that I want more narration.

Guild of Dungeoneering overall is a fun, well put together card battler. Its dungeon building elements work well and the games humor shines through in everything. It’s certainly worth picking up and is easily enjoyable for what it is. There’s very little to dislike in the game and with the pirates cove dlc on the horizon, there will no doubt be more content to come.

http://youtu.be/265e-Nj9XcQ

Inspired by Warcraft 3 mods like Night of the Dead. The Red Solstice is a well-made 8 man co-op isometric tactical shooter that caters to fans of multiplayer games. The mechanics are solid, promote team work and the game can be very fun and frustrating in equal measure. It has a few bugs and quirks here and there and it’s not particular pleasant to look at but it retains a multiplayer experience that is difficult to find, It's worth a look.