Recent reviews by Narayan

Yomawari: Night Alone at the surface is a cutesy, isometric adventure where the protagonist looks for her missing sister. However underneath all that there is a dark tale unfolding at a spirit infested Japanese town at night. The narrative basically punches you in the gut right at the beginning, setting the grim tone for the rest of the game.

The visuals are hand drawn & beautifully detailed. Locations are pretty, and very accurately depicted. The environment alone plays huge part in creating this wonderful, eerie atmosphere. But it's the monsters that are absolutely terrifying & heart attack inducing. Imo the Japanese folklore features one of the scariest bunch out there. I experienced constant goosebumps & frequent moments of panic.

The gameplay consists of exploring various parts of town, reading notes, finding objects, and using them in appropriate places. Enemies are plentiful and wonderfully varied. Not only in design, but also in how you should approach them. Part of the fun is learning in what way to avoid them. You play as a little defenceless girl, so you can't really fight back, and get instantly killed when attacked by a hostile spirit. Instead you can distract or slow them down them with items, sneak past them without making noise, rush past them, immobilize them with light, or stay in the dark when needed otherwise, and finally you can hide in the bushes and wait them out. There are different strategies for each enemy. You can try to outrun most of them, but the stamina system is not built with player favour in mind. The moment the protagonist gets scared (indicated by the sound of faster heartbeat), the stamina bar shrinks, and you can run even less. The closer to danger you are, the more tense the encounter.

If you’re in the need of intense thrill, this game would be near perfect. But unfortunately the technical side of it can frustrate immeasurably if you encounter any of the countless issues. I encountered quite a selection of them. I had it freezing in the intro. The solution was to set compatibility mode to Windows 98/ME, which worked but also made all the higher resolutions disappear, so I could play only in 1280x800 max. It was more or less functional, some crashes here and there, up until final boss encounter, where I ended up in a constant death loop. I couldn't even access the menu, just permanent blood red screen of death happening over and over, with a sound oft the protagonist respawning every few seconds. After I killed the client, I couldn't make it run again, so I reinstalled. It turned out the single save file that game allows you to have suffered data loss, and I had to repeat entire last chapter, which incidentally is extremely infuriating with several large enemies honing on the girl, on a narrow path, with one pity save spot thrown in the middle (each death forces you to repeat entire long sequence).

I pushed through it again, and the boss encounter went fine this time. I really liked the ending, which was more on a bitter-sweet side and well in line with the tone of the game. But all those issues really tainted what would otherwise be an awesome experience. Yomawari: Night Alone gets so many things right, and can be so very engaging, but it can also turn out to be very frustrating at times.

Written after completing the game with 10 hours played & 26 of 27 (96%) achievements earned.

Little Nightmares is a puzzle platformer game, with very creepy and very unnerving atmosphere. The visuals are outstanding, imaginative, and reinforce the unsettling feeling you get while playing. The sound design compliments everything nicely as well.

One of the best storytelling techniques was employed here - you learn a lot about the bizarre world you found yourself in, just by soaking in the surroundings. Carefully examining the environment provides the player with extra hints and flavor. All objects or even shadows seem to be placed very deliberately, many of them foreshadowing the things to come, or providing a deeper insight into the main narrative. When playing for the second time you will find yourself noticing many clever things in earlier chapters linking to the later ones. Or you may simply get to understand the vague and unclear parts during the first run. Unfortunately it also means that if you're not the kind of person that pays attention to this sort of thing, you might miss a lot and be left confused at the end.

So if you're not very into atmospheric games, and would skip out on this vital aspect, you'll be left with fairly simple platformer, where you run through locations, solving fairly simple puzzles mostly revolving around finding a way into next area. The only difficulty might come from being unsure how or what way to proceed, as there are no clear indicators. The level design is creative and everything is blended nicely, thus it’s not very obvious at a glance where you should go. Another thing making it harder are wonky controls. I played one entire run with keyboard&mouse, another run with controller, and the experience was not great regardless of the chosen method. I took issue with how collisions and perspective were handled. The game takes place on a nautical vessel, visualised by the screen floating slightly left-right-left. It affects in-game physics and degrades the handling even further. Another minor pet peeve is that some autosave checkpoints were spaced too far apart making you repeat way too long of a sequence in case you died (and do expect to die here many times).

Overall I really liked Little Nightmares. It’s very much my kind of game. Immersion & atmosphere are truly exquisite. And the ending was very powerful & exhilarating. For me, well worth playing it twice :) It's fairly short so I might return to it from time to time, in the similar fashion I re-read or re-watch well liked books and movies.

You can also check out my thoughts on the Secrets of The Maw expansion.

Written after beating the base game twice with 9.1 hours played & 12 of 13 base achievements earned.

Secrets of The Maw follows a Runaway Kid, different character than the protagonist of main story. The events of the expansion happen in parallel to the main events, in different locations for the most part, but from time to time you'll briefly get a glimpse or revisit familiar places. The DLCs enrich the lore of the game, and provide better insight into some things. They clear up some speculations after the base game, but leave you with other questions instead. :)

The Depths
As a first chapter it was much better than the beginning of the main story, but not yet as intense as the meat of main game. Plenty of creepiness, one of the worse kind for me - large bodies of murky water and stuff trying to grab you from below T_T

The Hideaway
More open ended than anything before in game, one could choose in which order to do things. There were few places that could be visited independently. All needed to be solved, but it felt more like roaming than following a set path, which was nice change of pace. Another change of pace was that this dlc was less scary (it featured already known adversary, not so many encounters), and more endearing instead - lots of cute Nomes that the protagonist was helping out and hugging :) The environment also felt warmer, with furnaces, coal and such.

The Residence
The last DLC was superb. The creep factor went through the roof. They introduced several small enemies here, as opposed to single big one. It felt a bit like a survival horror. The area was slightly claustrophobic, since it took place just in the residential area. And it required visiting the same rooms several times over trying to solve slightly more elaborate puzzles than before. So it had more adventure game aspects as well. The ending is satisfyingly grim, and it elegantly flows into the main narrative.

Definitely recommended if you liked the base game.

Written after completing extra content with 5.5 hours total spent on the DLCs alone & 9 of 9 expansion achievements earned.

LYNE is a puzzle game with a neat concept where you link triangles with triangles, squares with squares, and rhombuses with rhombuses using one line per each shape. Lines cannot cross each other outside of designated junction points, which have 2-4 crossing slots that all need to be filled. In order to complete a puzzle no figure or juncture slot can be left out.

The game gets extremely repetitive. Once you learn a handful of tricks how to deal with certain configurations, you basically apply them over and over till the very end. There is no variety. What is worse, the difficulty is all over place, you will do some progressively harder sets, then back to easy then suddenly an elaborate roadblock, then dive down to few ridiculously effortless ones around the middle of the game, followed by fluctuating between harder and easier ones (or more aptly, between the more and less time consuming ones, because majority of them weren’t particularly difficult anyway).

I played LYNE several years ago and initially liked it. Then after few sets I got bored, but managed to push through to G after which I completely lost interest in the game. Recently I came back to it just for the letter achievements, and basically had to watch YT videos in the background to keep myself entertained. There are 26 sets (A-Z), each containing 25 puzzles, so 650 total. As if that was not sufficiently monotonous, there are 2-3 extra sets generated every day. Quantity over quality.

Written after completing the game with 14.6 hours played & 33 of 33 (100%) achievements earned.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is a story oriented experience featuring a Celtic warrior suffering from psychosis that ventures into Viking underworld to save the soul of her beloved. At least that’s what you’re led to believe, as you’re following the events from the protagonist perspective, and the game is trying its hardest to emulate the struggles of people with that mental disorder. She will constantly hear voices & see things, there will be bright discolorations & visual distortions, there will be darkness chasing her and rot eating up into her. She will be reminded of the grim side of her past & upbringing. Despite paralyzing fear she will need to muster her resolve in order to look into herself and slowly recollect blocked out horrific memories, and face the unrelenting challenges awaiting her.

The game plays largely like a very sophisticated walking simulator, with fairly simple puzzles and combat arenas. For the most part you will be exploring very detailed and gorgeous looking environments, trying to achieve a singular goal - to enter Helheim and confront Hela. There will be some roadblocks and detours on your way, as well as events forcing you off the set course. The locations are designed really well. Even though you follow a fairly linear path, the geography feels like a seamless whole with lots of interconnecting passageways and shortcuts.

The puzzles you solve are mostly of a visual nature, requiring you to find rune shaped objects or shadows. You will need to move around and look for the right perspective where the correct shape can be uncovered. Even though some variations were more interesting than others (like the Valravn archways reshaping fragments of environment), they were not very riveting overall. Very much in line with the psychosis theme though, where patterns all around emerge despite there being none, which people link together despite no such connections. Ordinary words, sounds, colours and objects become steeped in meaning, forming a strange and sinister puzzle only in their minds.

The combat has weight to it, feels deliberate and realistic. There are some basic combos & neat moves you can execute, and it can be fun for a while. Unfortunately, it’s designated to certain specific areas, were enemies will spawn wave after wave. You won’t see any of them roaming freely in the world. Encounters are unevenly distributed. Sometimes you’ll run into several battle arenas in a row, and then you’ll go through large portion of the game only solving puzzles and listening to voices/ narration & watching story cutscenes.

Towards the end of the game you will face more and more opponents at once, and you’ll learn that the real enemy here is the unreliable camera movement often obscuring the view, or hiding the attackers behind you, along with automatic targeting system that frequently won’t let you strike who you want, or place you in danger by swapping to the furthest enemy mid combo, and positioning you in the middle of the group (something you really want to avoid).

The greatest advantage in my opinion is that the game attempts something new, and it succeeds on this front. It’s immersive and believable. The story is serious, the theme is heavy and doesn’t pull any punches, and all that has been approached very respectfully, but at the same time nothing is sugar coated or shunned away from. It potentially can make you feel uneasy, but it might also enrich your point of view. It’s the atmosphere that rules here. The gameplay is vastly outranked. It’s not bad, it's just relatively modest in scope, and doesn’t feel substantially fleshed out. There is enough of it to provide another layer of engagement, but don’t go into this game for the mechanics alone or you might get disappointed.

Recommended, but tone down your expectations in certain regards :)

Written after completing the game with 10.5 hours played & 14 of 14 (100%) achievements earned.

Let’s get this out of the way first: the game itself is great, but the port is terrible. The vanilla client makes everything lag beyond point of comfort, and causes all sorts of issues. Luckily for us PC users the FAR mod does wonders. I wouldn’t advise playing without it. I’ve spent an hour just tweaking the graphical settings, but it was worth it. I managed to achieve smooth & fluid gameplay, and played 93 hours without a single hitch, no thanks to Square Enix.

As for the game, NieR:Automata is at its core a jRPG, but it incorporates several other genres like a platformer, bullet hell, spectacle fighter, shoot’em up, etc. And it blends everything surprisingly well. Camera perspective will often shift between 3rd person view, top down view, and a 2.5D left-right platformer view. Core gameplay consist of following the story, doing side quests, exploring the world to find secrets or extra loot, collecting and upgrading weapons, fighting multiple enemies at once & impressive bosses, and adjusting character loadouts where you slot plug-in chips granting you wide variety of enhancements.

Overall the game is absolutely mind-blowing. The visuals are beautiful. The music is epic & astounding. Gameplay is amazingly varied & feels fresh. It positively surprises at every corner. After just an hour it managed to both awe me and make me tear up. But the overarching narrative is not stellar. If you read sci-fi & cyberpunk you probably already read many vastly better stories than Nier:A. If you read philosophy you'll find it quite shallow in comparison. Basically the game just glances over some concepts, as well as keeps most of its characters a bit one-note. However what NieR:Automata does exceptionally well, is that it strings together series of emotionally loaded segments. Each story segment lasts probably around 1-2h, and it has everything self contained and well executed. With a new objective you go somewhere, are greeted with breathtaking vistas, and motivated to act by one of the most invigorating soundtracks I’ve ever heard. Usually there is urgency and/or intrigue and everything wraps up in a satisfying mini-finale. So even though the main narrative is on the weaker side, is not a serious detriment, because the flow was designed with gaming sessions in mind. Which for a game is a good thing, since you'll experience enjoyment and payout every time you sit down to play.

The gameplay is fluid. The characters are animated really well & their mobility is off the charts. It’s a pleasure to control them. You attack the enemies both with melee weapons and fire ranged pod at the same time. The dodge mechanic is a bit overpowered. It is instant (interrupts whatever animation the character was doing), the i-frames are quite long, and there is no stamina bar, meaning you can just dodge constantly and will avoid pretty much everything as long as you’re pressing the button. There are plenty of plug-in chips that expand your options, like time slowing on dodge, cutting through bullets to make them explode, countering (sends portion of damage back to the attacker), taunting (risk reward glass cannon system, where damage output increases both for the protagonist, and the enemy), etc. There is a limit of what you can slot. The upgraded chips take more space, so you'll find yourself constantly tinkering with the system, as you can’t just slot all the best ones (not too mention there is just too many of them). You can swap them out on the fly as well as create different loadouts for different situations. Things like auto item pickup, or showing chests on the map, are plug-in chips too, as well as displaying mini-map, hp bars or cooldown timers. So you're not only optimizing combat capabilities, but also balancing them out with utility and convenience.

On top of customizing the gameplay via plug-ins, there are 3 different characters to play as protagonists. 2B is a combat type, that can use 2 weapons & many combos, and is your starting character. 9S is hacking oriented. He still can fight, but is slower and less effective than 2B or A2. His hacking capabilities are overpowered though. If you’re good at the hacking minigame, you can basically one shot mini-boss enemies, and take large chunks of boss HP in a single hacking blow. Not to mention remote control enemies or make them fight for you. A2 is also a combat type, with one of attacks replaced by a convenient taunt. She has the longest and best looking dash, as well as unique berserk mode, which allows dishing out large amount of damage while her hp constantly drains. It's fun to try to build her with various hp enhancing and regenerating chips for uninterrupted berserk mode as long as there are enemies around. :)

To play through all the content (some side quests, intel or activities are tied to a character or particular point of the main story), you need to experience 3 routes. Route A (where you control 2B) is just a bit less than half of the game. And while route B re-tells that same initial part of the story, but from 9S perspective, you get access to additional cutscenes & more data providing better insight, and filling some of the blanks. In the sections where 2B & 9S were split apart you get new content, mostly revolving around 9S' unique playstyle. Route C is the continuation to the events that happened to 2B & 9S in A/B, is vital to the plot, and provides most explanations. From the C ending you just need to reload the save and pick different option for remaining canon endings D&E. Also after route C you unlock chapter select, so you can go back to any point of the game and finish up either quests you missed or your collection.

I had a blast. Definitely worth playing :)

Written after completing the game with 93 hours played & 47 of 47 (100%) achievements earned.

Pinstripe is a short, but visually impressive platformer. It's story driven, but not really complex or thought provoking. The atmosphere is really nice though. The controls are ok, and platforming itself is simple but fun, especially with the artstyle being so pretty, that it enhances the experience.

Normally if you would like to 100% the game, you would need to play it twice, as there are some flavour choices that you make that slightly affect the ending. But I’ve actually ran through it it 5 times, cause achivs were bugged into oblivion. Each time I started the run I had to restart the game and verify file cache as a countermeasure (even though there were no errors). I read about this trick in discussions, but didn't go looking for advice until I've beaten the game for the first time and no achivements unlocked, not even the ending one. So I had to replay it. Then it turned out some achivs won’t pop while doing other achivs anyway, so I needed to repeat for those again and again. All in all, you can speed run it under an hour (there is even an achiv for that), so it wasn't that bad in the end. I got so good at it that my last run took only 30-ish mins XD

Overall I enjoyed it. I wouldn't keep playing so many times if I didn't. But I would appreciate it more if it worked properly. I don't know what state the game is right now, but if they sorted that issue out, then playing it would be really pleasant way to spend time. :)

Written after completing the game with 7 hours played total & 12 of 12 (100%) achievements earned.

Slayaway Camp is a hilarious take on a slider puzzle, with a theme of a VHS B-movie slasher series. The base puzzles are quite smart. As you progress, new and interesting mechanics are introduced. And then there are extra levels available, which are more challenging. Plenty of fun to be had. The game rewards you with lots of murderers & killer moves to unlock, and as a side activity features a minigame where you constantly just slaughter blocky people :D

It sucked me in and I couldn’t stop playing till I beat the base game. After that obtaining the remaining few unlockables feels a bit grindy, but since there are still some extra puzzles left for me, I’ll probably revisit it from time to time.

Really neat & enjoyable.

Written after beating the game with 10.8 hours played & 41 of 50 (82%) achievements earned.

In Verbis Virtus is a game where you cast spells using your voice (microphone is required). It is visually stunning. Not so much in the graphics fidelity department, but rather it's about the fantastic use of colour, as well as very imaginative surroundings - lavish & very ornamental. There is quite bit of lore there (if you go out of your way to find it) and a nicely constructed background to the events. Story itself however is simple, but touching in the end. Luckily In Verbis Virtus doesn't rely solely on its speech gimmick, but there is an actual game there - an exploration puzzle, reminiscent of Myst, by no means as hard. Although the puzzles start out obvious, they turn progressively harder and more elaborate as the game goes by. The closer to the end you are, the more likely checking a guide might be needed, unless solving puzzles is a breeze for you :)

Even though the overall feel was positive, this is my my first and last game with voice commands. At the beginning I was surprised it generally recognized my voice/ accent. And while English is a learned language for me, the game doesn't require it either. Instead there are mystical sounding word commands, something a fantasy mage would cast. In the later stages the game got more complex, and even added combat. There were more and more spells in your arsenal, that you needed to memorise in order to use them effectively, and as a result the voice recognition got stupider. What was not an issue with handful of spells, became an issue later. The game started mixing up and executing the wrong spells, so situations like teleporting into lava instead of placing a fire mark became irritating. Or it did not react at all, so shouting 3-4 times the same attack spell over and over while in combat resulted in death, as if the game missed the voice input entirely.

Overall In Verbis Virtus did a really good job of emulating the feeling of being all powerful mage, not only by being able to bend the world to your will (and the fact that player needed to speak out the words of power instead of pressing buttons, just intensified that feeling), but also by being all scholarly & forcing you to use your head. You were discovering ancient secrets & solving mysterious puzzles, motivated by a constant thirst for knowledge and a desire to peer under the veil. All those elements fit well together, and overcoming puzzles felt really satisfying. But in the end the constant errors in spell recognition became a major nuisance, that made the game much harder in the frustrating way.

I’m glad I played it though. And imo if someone would like to try a voice command game, this would be a good choice, despite its shortcomings, because of everything else being well made and nicely put together.

Written after completing the game with 15.6 hours played & 100% achievements earned.

SOLITUNE is a very, very short art installation kind of experience. First time playing it took me 21 minutes to beat, even though I read and inspected everything carefully. Then I beat it again (probably around 15mins this time). The length was particularly disappointing, because I've watched around 7-10 mins of youtube footage before deciding if I'm interested in this game. I though I was taking a peek at it, but if I kept watching I would accidentally see it all, even though my intention is to play games, not watch them, and I only use snippets of gameplay videos to try to make informed decision.

As for the game itself - the music and atmosphere were nice. It was especially enjoyable to leave it running at the end credits and just listen to the tune. Very chill experience that aims to be on the bizarre side, with some social commentary maybe, slightly condescending at times, not particularly deep or anything. But there was so little of it, and it felt so disjointed, plus it didn't lead up to anything, that it's pointless to even try to form coherent thoughts on it. There is barely anything to do either, you click 1-3 highlighted objects to progress a scene and then read few lines of a dialogue. So the game is lacking both in the content and gameplay departments. I liked the sheep though, the use of colour, music, and weird vibe. I don't regret playing myself, but I can't imagine recommending it to anyone.

Written after two playthroughs that took around 35 minutes total.