Recent reviews by Narayan

Voodoo Garden is a cute idle/clicker game, with pleasant music, manageable amount of content (not one of those endless ones), and cool theme. You occupy a swamp, collect ingredients, make potions, sacrifice animals for their spirits to serve you, that sort of thing ;)

I ran it in the background for few days, with probably not even 4 hours of me paying attention to it. Unfortunately it might have had a memory leak or something, cause after several hours it always slowed down significantly and required a restart. I don't see myself “playing” other idle games in future, but this one was nice.

Written after completing the game with 33.6 hours run time & 100% achievements earned.

Home Sheep Home 2 is a puzzle platformer with a simple premise. You have 3 different sheep that all need to reach exit of a scene. One is large and heavy & can push objects, the middle one jumps high, and the small one can get through crawl spaces. You swap between them and control each individually one by one.

Puzzles themselves aren't hard. Finding & obtaining secret objects might be though. Especially that positioning the sheep one on top of other in order to reach higher places can be finicky. They tend to slide off, and by accident you can easily push others away from the positions you left them in. What might be quite hard is getting 3 stars on each level, as it requires the player to be fast enough to beat certain times. Personally I don't think puzzles and speed running meshes well.

The game itself didn't grip me for some reason. I greatly enjoy Shaun the Sheep, the TV show. I find the game visuals and overall atmosphere to be adorable. Puzzles form a story of a wild adventure the sheep are having (through locations and actions, not words). I should like this, but somehow I don’t. Most of the time playing I felt that I just want to be done with it.

There doesn't seem to be anything inherently wrong with it (or at least I can't seem to articulate it), but I don't think I can recommend it either. Maybe if you have lots of spare time, not much else to play, and are aiming at just the casual base experience.

Written after beating the game with 3.7 hours played & 40 of 52 (77%) achievements earned.

Ninja Pizza Girl is a runner/ platformer kind of game, and it's ok. Nothing special. Beat the timer to deliver pizza, get a story comic panel. What I liked was “in the zone” mechanic - after a brief period of not bumping into anything, music would change to something more pumped up, colours would get brighter & movement smudges would appear. It was fun to keep this state as long as possible. Multiple routes leading up to the same point were nice too - one could just freely run & jump without risk of getting lost.

What I didn’t like was the snowball effect on mistakes, especially when faced with enemy ninjas. If they stopped you too many times, the character would get into a sort of depression state, and player needed to mash a button to make her better and get her to run again. If you made too many mistakes, the game just punished you for it by delaying you even more (as if your own mistakes weren't wasting enough precious time). There was no recuperate mechanic to counter this. So either your run went well from the start, or it was a waste of time after just few bumps. The game has an underlying anti-bullying message, so I understand where they were coming from, but the gameplay was frustrating at times because of it. Luckily the aggressive behaviour can be toned down in the options, or turned off for the repeated runs.

The controls weren't particularly tight either. Sometimes there were issues grabbing ledges. When using a bouncing platform one couldn't change the direction in the air. And the character had problems tackling the uphill slopes when not enough momentum was built. It was particularly jarring, cause the angle of those could be easily traversed in real life by just walking, but the character couldn't - you needed to turn back and gain substantial speed to get over them.

The visuals are serviceable. Overall it’s not very hard, but for completionists this game could potentially be a nightmare. There are achivs to deliver the pizza 100 or even 1000 times (1 level = 1 pizza). And there is only a handful of levels, so you would need to beat the entire game over 42 times (or grind one level ad nauseam) for 100%.

It's not bad, but if you don't have much time for gaming, or plenty of other things in backlog, you probably should pick something else instead.

Written after 3.6 hours played & 24 of 28 (86%) achievements earned.

Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a true modern cRPG. Instead of just emulating the Infinity Engine itself, it preserves the old school soul and complexity, includes all the things you would expect from ye olden days, adds many positive surprises on top of it, then frames them into amazing shiny 3D visuals with functional UI and tons of convenience. Even though there is number 2 in the title, it can be played as a standalone game without prior knowledge of the previous OS, or others in the Divinity series.

The game world is just packed with stuff to do - every few steps you bump into something new happening. And that’s above and below ground, as the game features quite a lot of caves, dungeons, ancient ruins, cellars, and even a pocket universe. The player has always plenty options to chose from how to proceed. Abilities like persuasion or lockpicking are really useful, and talking to animals is just awesome. The story is serious in tone, with many mature subplots, but it’s not lacking some needed moment to moment humor either (usually when doing side missions, not as unnecessary comic relief to main line). There are many memorable characters & situations. The companions are great and well fleshed out, each of them quite distinct. Their stories often intertwine with the main plot, so they all feel relevant.
While the game is fantasy in nature, and there are plenty of things we’re used to, there are also many quirks and ideas unique only to this world. Enough for it to feel fresh most of the time.

It’s not perfect though (but close). There are limits to what you can do, although there is very high chance you'll be able to execute most plans you come up with. The pacing was a little weird as well - the 2nd area with Driftwood was just too huge and not particularly structured. They might have been aiming at more open feel after the initial island, but it just turned out to be tiring by the end of it, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I’m aware that if I wasn’t a person hell bent on scouring every inch of the map, and doing absolutely everything, I might feel otherwise, but that’s just the way I like to play, so that part didn’t mesh well with my game style. I had to take a break a bit after that, but later areas, Nameless Isle and Arx were great again :)

Part of that issue might have been due to combat, there was just too much of it for my taste. The combat at first is quite confusing, since many useful skills are too spread out between different lines, and it introduces some new concepts like surfaces. Then you get the hang of it, and it’s fun for some time, and later on you get overwhelmed by sheer amount if it. There are many epic fights all right, but at the same time, even though I appreciated the variety and scope of them, sometimes I just wanted to get it over with and progress a bit faster (turn based battles can take a while).

But overall D:OS2 is simply outstanding. Highly recommended :)

Written after 173 hours played & 84 of 97 (87%) achievements earned.

Salt and Sanctuary is a 2D souls-like game, and it completely consumed my life for a week. Once I've started it, it kept me continuously glued to the screen. Only after I’ve devoured it entirely, I felt I could rest. I’ve beaten all the bosses (that look amazing & intimidating), including the secret/ optional ones. I’ve discovered every secret passage, and found every item, talked to every NPC, and learned all the vague scraps of lore. I’ve created several characters with wildly different builds, seen the endings twice, played a lot in NG+, as well as roamed around the regular game with different chars just for fun.

I had a great time, even though there was a lot of cursing & dying. But it was always followed by wanting to get back and try again. Cool and unique builds can be made, that really provide advantage over the usual timing the blocks/ dodges for prolonged periods of time. Learning patterns and weaknesses, as well as getting into the rhythm, along with figuring out how to tweak your character best, was extremely satisfying.

I’ve played two other Ska Studios games, and I already liked their specific style, but I think they really outdid themselves on this one. The world building is really exciting - so many hidden spots, and secret paths interconnecting many areas with unique feel to them. The environments are fantastic looking. The atmosphere is purely outstanding. Awesome music & sound plays a substantial part in it, along with many distinct & frightening enemies keeping you on the edge. Overall mood resonated really well with me. There is mystery enticing you in, and there is dread following you. Everything is just so captivating & well pieced together. For me the engagement factor went through the roof :)

Highly recommended!

Written after 66 hours played & 100% achievements earned.

Fidel is a fun, smart, cute looking puzzle rogue-lite. For me it was very engaging. Rules of the game, how each enemy works, one learns organically through observation & experimentation, and it's fun to figure out what new elements do. While it’s a rogue-lite, and the random can sometimes screw the player over, it’s predominantly a puzzle game, so there is much more control.

There are two "boss" levels (at the end of main game & underworld), which introduce several new concepts at once, but there is an endless undo, and no time limit on those, so player can take it slow discovering new mechanics and then the solution. No need to repeat whole dungeon several times to have a brief chance at the boss level, like the regular rogue-likes do it. One needs to prepare for those “bosses” though, by completing previous levels well (more XP=more HP, more coins=extra items to use).

There are also extra centipede levels, along with extra puzzle levels, that after beating unlock zombie-Fidel & robo-Fidel respectively, dog alternatives that change the gameplay significantly for further replays of the base game & underworld.

And after all that, the player can challenge themselves by beating the game under different conditions for achievements. Personally, I’ve finished all the base & underworld floors resulting in true ending, all the centipede & puzzle levels, and then did a few successful special runs. I had a lot of fun and I’ll probably come back to it from time to time.

Very much recommended :)

Written after 10.5 hours played & 13 of 23 (57%) achievements earned

Back to the Future: The Game is a dialogue & story focused adventure game. Unlike other Telltale games I've played & liked (Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us, a bit of Game of Thrones) it strays a bit from their formula. There are no choices whatsoever (not even the illusory ones) - the story is strictly predefined without even the tiniest of detours. The general quality of the game seems to be subpar at best in comparison to their previous titles. The controls are clunky, the graphics lacks detail and overall polish, the UI elements are huge (mobile like) and obtrusive (even after turning off everything the game allowed me to). And unlike other Telltale games, where you don't really need to know the source material - here you do. You should be familiar with the movies, as the game starts sometime after 3rd movie ended, and not only doesn't explain who is who, but also casually showers you with references assuming you remember everything in detail. If I haven't re-watched the movies recently to refresh my memory, I feel like I would have been at a disadvantage.

For some weird reason the game is split into 5 separate entries in the Steam library, forcing user to re-apply their settings every time they start a new chapter. No wonder no decisions can't be made here, because nothing carries over to the next chapter, since each has to be started as a separate game. The only thing you decide upon in first chapter - your fake name you introduce yourself in the past, is instantly invalidated in chapter 2, where other game inhabitants insist on calling the protagonist what seems to be a default name from the ch1 list. Also I've noticed the time played is not summed up. Chapter 1 time is displayed as total time (which in my case was around 14 hours total, not 3.3 as shown).

The default movement controls require you to left click and drag to move, and on top of that right clicking makes Marty run. Thing is, the right click also skips dialogue, so gods forbid you bump into another character while running like that - you will immediately skip first few lines of dialogue without any option to go back and listen to them. Thankfully you can also move with WSAD and use Shift to run to avoid accidental skip, but the game doesn't tell you that. The environment is so littered with invisible walls that it borders on ridiculous at times & trying to walk can be an exercise in patience. You'd think that in an open area you can cross the road wherever you want - well nope, just in specific nondescript junction points. Rarely you're allowed to just walk up to something in a straight line. Most of the time it feels like being forced into invisible rails.

Clickboxes (clickable areas that allow interaction with objects) are inconsistent. Sometimes they are so huge that clicking several cm from an object still triggers an interaction. Sometimes they are so tiny, that even when you know for sure that they should be there somewhere, you still need to comb the screen carefully with your mouse. Sometimes an object had more than one clickbox separated by empty space, and even though you'd think that the 2nd one is for a different object it still triggeres interaction with the thing you already checked. Whenever I found myself stuck, it usually turned out later that I missed one vital object that was either hard to pinpoint or overshadowed by a bigger nearby object with a huge clickbox. This was particularly frustrating when I had to do a lot of back and forth between several locations. The difficulty mainly came from finding all the interactive objects. Once you pinpointed where everything was, it was quite easy from there.

After first two chapters I was convinced I will be giving this game thumbs down. Even though I liked the story and character development, I wasn't enjoying it and instead I was just irritated most of the time due to game's several issues and disappointing quality & mechanics. The events past chapter 3 raised the stakes, so I became determined to push though & finish the game to see how it all ends. And even though there were so many time jumps, fixing one thing resulting in messing up another and spawning yet another fubar timeline, that there should have been bajillion paradoxes already (not to mention a silly explanation where did the DeLorean came from in the first place), despite all that I'm glad I've played though it. Mainly because the final chapter was indeed great, and the ending was so adorably self aware of its own plot shortcomings, that it put a wide smile on my face and basically redeemed the rest of the game in my eyes :)

If you're planning on playing this game and like me you thought "I like Telltale games and I like Back to the Future movies, so this game should be no-brainer" be aware that this might not be the case. The overall quality & design is disappointing compared to other major Telltale titles. The story is really neat with satisfying finale, but one might consider just watching a let's play instead of having to deal with game's clunkiness and irritating issues. Myself I prefer playing instead of watching, and I'm still in good mood after having beaten the game, so my "on fence" stance is slightly tipped towards thumbs up :) Buyer beware though :)

Broforce is a great action platformer. I don't think I will write here anything new above everything else that was already said, but this game fully deserves my +1 and besides, I just couldn't recommend it more.

It features lots of explosions, varied enemies, fully destructible environment (if you overdo it, you can annihilate everything including your way out) and bros - numerous playable characters that parody popular tough guys or gals from movies. Many of them differ wildly from one another in playstyle, and you get them at random (whenever you die or liberate a captive, the game assigns you one from the set you unlocked).

You can play alone or co-op with up to 3 friends, both online and locally. And if you have someone over at your house, they can join you anytime - even while you're in the middle of a stage, just hand them a gamepad/ keyboard and press a button - it's that easy. There is no friendly fire (you're not taking damage if a friend shoots you directly), but you can kill your co-op partner nonetheless by environment (boulder to the head after destroying the structures too much) or blow them up by triggering explosives they stand next to. But that's ok - even dying is fun in this game. :D

Everything is fast paced and humorous. You can approach the stages in a more tactical way, or just jump around like a headless chicken & shoot all over- whichever suits you better. You will most likely die much more following the 2nd approach, but due to the random switching of bros you may luck out at some point and push through to the end while having fun all the way. There is much fun to be had - while the stages don't vary that much some may still surprise you, and the bosses are imaginative as well as challenging, ending is just perfect - completing the campaign feels extremely satisfying.

Broforce is crazy fun & provides pure, unfettered joy. It was simply designed with player enjoyment in mind :)

First Impressions (27 Apr 2016)

I've just finished Book 1 (which is available for free). I find the artstyle quite amazing. The aesthetics got me interested in this game and did not disappoint.

As for the rest - Huntsman: Winter's Curse is a visual novel with turn based battles. While you are quite often presented with a choice, it doesn't matter at all. There is always a "right" answer and the "wrong" answer. If you pick the "wrong" one, you'll just get to read 1-2 extra lines steering you immediately on the right track. The consequences are always the same.
Story is fairly straightforward and predictable. Some of the characters are likeable, but barely fleshed out. Narration seems to be quite shallow.

That's why the addition of combat is really welcome. It's turn based with initiative bar and cards as skills (variations of attacks, heals, aoes, status effects). There is also a character screen where you can allocate points into basic passive traits and equip your group with gear (each equipment piece has its own set of cards = abilities provided). It's not complicated at all, but relatively enjoyable and makes the game less one-dimensional.

I'm on fence with this one. It's not that bad. Just short and simplistic. I would like to see more of the game's art, but I'm not really inclined to buy the remaining books. Perhaps at a significant discount. The free chapter is worth checking out though :)

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Full Playthrough Update (22 Mar 2018)

The story later on is still predictable, but in addition to that it gets very repetitive and dull. While initially not particularly riveting, it had potential to be its own thing. But on top of replicating the same plot points every chapter, it also features a weak cliché twist in the final chapter.

The combat gets boring as well. There is not much of card variety, just a handful of types introduced early on. All you get later are just bigger numbers. And what is worse, the devs decided to push it onto you constantly. Even if not needed, you get few lines of lame excuse why those spiders or wolves or whatever are attacking you yet again.

Whole game structure basically goes like this: text-combat-text-combat-text-combat-text-etc. Both parts equally mundane and tiring in the end. Also, the game didn't save my progress from before, so I had to replay the first chapter.

The main selling point for me & something I was looking forward the most - to see more of that eye pleasing art, I got disappointed the most. No, the artstyle didn't suddenly get worse or anything, it's still great. It's just that every single object, character & background is so heavily recycled, that I saw maybe few more new designs later on. Initial 20% of the game probably holds something around 80% of all the game's art assets. Vast majority of that is just rehashed in the following 4 chapters.

Thus I'm changing my rating to "not recommended". Full game is imo not worth anyone's time, not to mention money.

Written after completing the game with 8.3 hours in a single playthrough & 10 of 10 (100%) achievements earned.

The Deer is a static diorama type of a display, where you walk left and right with your deer and read dry encyclopedic facts about Pleistocene. You can also mouse over some object in order to read some more facts. There are 3 ultra short & easy minigames that vaguely align with the game's theme. Going back and forth through the entire length, reading everything on display, clicking through "minigames", reading instructions and whole curiosities section in menu - it all takes a little under 10 minutes.

The artstyle is nice to look at, but that's the only positive thing I can say about it. I have no idea who the target audience is - not adults that's for sure. As for children - they would need to be old & knowledgeable enough to read English (there are no other languages), exhibit high tolerance for boring random tidbits of knowledge and be ok with no other elements to entertain them (just get your kid some nicely illustrated and well edited children's book on this topic instead).

The only gameplay there is (pressing A & D to walk left & right) is clunky - it takes several presses to switch direction, and The Deer will often continue walking in the previous direction for a while, even when the opposite button used. Sometimes it will get stuck going in one direction and if you want to walk another way you need to restart the game... Clicking often misses it's mark (most apparent in the "find 5 right foods" minigame - what gets marked is usually somewhere around the cursor, not under it, sometimes you need to click a couple of times for the game to register). Oh and those issues persist even in the correct resolution. What resolution is that? Well apparently anything 16:9 - if you pick different ratio (windowed/ fullscreen - no difference), then the sides will be cut off (which is apparent by things like half a home button in the curiosities section or half of the deer head stamp you receive after solving a minigame).

Basically what little gameplay they had in there, they couldn't even make that right.