Recent reviews by Rob T Firefly

I love Arkanoid, but this really isn't it.

I mainly got this for a legit way to play the original Arkanoid, but the original version in this is displayed warped to appear like an old CRT screen with obnoxious glowy CRT effects and a huge arcade cabinet bezel. It's not possible to just have the game full-screen.

The "Neo" version of the game is just okay, but the difficulty is way unbalanced and the frustration factor is through the roof compared to the original. Lots of extra graphical flair doesn't make up for the lacking gameplay.

It's also evident that this version of the game was just a quick cash-in-and-abandon job by the developers; there haven't been any updates since the 2022 release, and lots of bug reports, complaints, and calls for simple features in the discussion forums here on Steam have gone ignored.

I bought this because the version of Arkanoid included as a playable easter egg in Life Is Strange: True Colors reminded me how much I loved the game, but it's weird that I'll have to keep getting my fix of the original by playing that game instead. This one is getting uninstalled and deleted.

This game is a delight for anyone who tinkered with the CD-I games back in the day, and/or were exposed to them via YouTube Poop. It turns out that taking famously bad games with iconically weird design sensibilities and asking the question "what if those games, but GOOD?" results in a fun experience which is weird in all the right ways.

As a retro game it shines. So many so-called "retro" things just slap pixel art on any old garbage, but this is really made with the heart and soul of the era which inspired it in mind. It really fits the aesthetic in a celebratory way.

After you've played through the base game, be sure to try the "Farcette" mod by Ellie Spectacular which brings YouTube Poop right back into the game with hilarious results.

I really hope to see more from this developer.

I played these on Apple //e and //gs back in the day, and I have just today finished this remastered version.

It's trippy how playing these games legitimately felt like revisiting places I grew up in. The remaster did just the right amount of polishing the look and feel and improving the gameplay while keeping the spirit of the thing really authentic to the original games.

Remasters of past-gen games have been a dime a dozen for a long time now, but this one gloriously stands out to me. I haven't played a remaster this successful, true to the originals, and just plain FUN since "Super Mario All-Stars" updated the 8-bit games for a 16-bit era.

There are those games we play because they allow us to approximate exotic experiences we will never have in real life - flying through space, shooting zombies, winning championships, fighting dragons, saving worlds, etc. - and then there's a game like this.
You may wonder, what's so exotic about flushing a toilet? Most people do that several times a day, it may be one of the most mundane experiences of modern life.

But then, you find you can simulate flushing a golden toilet, a future toilet, a vampire's toilet, and more.

After that, you realize you can simulate flushing things down that toilet. Poop, sure, but also toys. Guns, My friends, you can flush TOILETS down that toilet.

It's about this time that you realize that your gaming life will never again be the same.

There are games I've spent many multiple dollars of money on and then regretted. I shall never regret spending the single dollar of money it took to get this game onto my computer.

It's a fairly cute cosmetic addition to the game, but immersion is broken somewhat by the fact that no matter which sonic screwdriver you select it still appears as the Thirteenth Doctor's one in your inventory.

What prevents me from giving this the thumbs-up is it honestly just feels to me like something which should be a nice little unlock reward for completing the game or something, not a paid DLC to what's already a fairly expensive game for its length. If the different imaginary toy in your digital hand is worth the price to you, by all means go for it.

I came to this having grown up playing the Game Boy version of "Heiankyo Alien." I wish this version of the game had adapted some of the innovations of that Game Boy port; the nicer graphics, the multiple breeds of alien, the little boats to escape on, the undiggable areas of ground, the disappearing barriers, and I particularly miss that awesome soundtrack by Norio Nakagata.

This port is just sort of okay, though not really anything special for the price, but when I want to really have a good time playing "Heiankyo Alien" I'm going back to the Game Boy port.

I was one of the Kickstarter backers of this game, which seemed like an interesting experiment. I never got around to trying it out until now, and am disappointed to find that it's such a mess of a game.

The environment is a sparkly translucent mess; ironically for a game about a character who is blind, they show you *too* much for it to be useful. Trying to navigate this world gave me an actual physical headache, and that's not something I'm generally prone to in gaming. I had to just give up playing this after a while; it just wasn't fun or enjoyable, and I later skimmed through others' playthroughs and discussions to get a feel for what I missed out on by not continuing.

For a game about a blind character who ostensibly navigates through sound, the sound isn't very useful. The game's audio is vague and only the slightest bit directional, and offers almost no help in finding your way.

The story is vague to the point of barely-trying, whatever questions you may have about the character and her world are hardly addressed. It seems little actual writing was done.

There aren't any control-options or other guidance given; unless you dig through the user discussions and such you won't even know how to move or do much. Even when you do know how to move, there's almost no way to figure out where you're supposed to go or what you're supposed to do; you're left blundering about until you achieve something, get lost, or die.

A supreme basic irony of this game: for a game about a character who is blind and which attempts to use that blindness as a novelty game mechanic, it's a completely inaccessible and unplayable mess for players with low or no vision. Though I'm sighted I've worked in the field of accessibility for the blind and low-vision community and I have experience playing and enjoying alternatively-accessible games, and this game is definitely not one of them.

All in all, this is a really disappointing effort and a missed opportunity. I'm uninstalling and forgetting about it.