Recent reviews by shrewdlogarithm

There's actually a lot to like here - the mix of road and offroad racing is very much like MR games of the past (the first 2, in particular, were awesomesauce)

There's plenty of tracks/bikes/riders/unlocks here - lots of do - but there are a couple of issues I noticed

It has a slightly dodgy UI - Backspace is marked as 'Return' which confused me for a while for example - it's not the best

There are performance issues - sometimes the game just slows-down/stutters like hell
It doesn't feel like it's a hardware issue, it happens at different points even in the same event - it just seems to be something you'll have to live with...

Physics can be a bit wonky at times - the feel of the bike isn't QUITE right sometimes - it just feels like it needed another month-or-2 of polishing tbh

None of those are actually game-breakers - I've had some fun (as noted, I got this as a freebie but I'd happily pay $20 for this and not feel robbed)

I can't recommend this but it may be that I'm missing something so I thought I'd explain why...

I'm not proud of this, but I've played plenty of mobile F2P (P2W) clicker/builder/idle games - some were OK for a short while, most were not but every-single-one of them was more fun for the first 10-15 mins (or more) than this...

I really don't get this game - it starts painfully slowly, it's grindy inside 2 mins and it offers not the slightest sign of progress to a new player at-all?

30mins in and I'm doing the same thing I was at 2 mins - there's nothing teasing me into playing-on - no "just a bit further and you'll get a shiny new thing" that I've noticed?

I expected more - not just because it's not an F2P game - not just because it's on PC - but because some people evidently like it and - why!?!? :)

If you like Hexcells - this is more-of-the-same with some 3D/moving-parts added for good measure - buy it, you'll like it.

If you've not played Hexcells - play that first and then read the above ^^^^

One thing surprised me here - tjhis game shows you the absolute basics and then gets pretty hard, pretty fast! Within 5 mins you'll be solving puzzles '2 steps ahead in your head' - there's no soft-start here.

As you progress the puzzles seem to get a bit easier - you have 'more clues' for the more complex puzzles but their design is well worth seeing even if they're not always as hard as they are intricate.

Note: you have to solve each puzzle to unlock the next - I know this bugs some people so I thought I'd mention that.

I struggle with this one because it's not a BAD game - in-fact, it has some really interesting and novel ideas being something of "Ikaruga the platformer"

It's biggest issue is that it mistakes frustration and annoyance for skill and/or difficulty.

It loves putting savepoints MILES from the action - because walking for long periods is HUGE fun!?

It also loves teaching you how stuff works by surprise/killing you - expect to repeat a LOT of stuff just to learn the mechanics...

I also ran into a couple of places where you could be knocked-off a platform and fall onto the savepoint - that means you re-save with with no health - really!?

So, whilst it has some good ideas and certainly looks nice it's just FAR too frustrating and I don't do frustrating (and unless you're weird, neither do you?)

p.s. whilst I got this for free on PC, I paid money on XBOX and have a few hours clocked on that version too - PC version is prettier but shares the same gameplay issues (sadly)

As a fan of 'word finder' games I just don't get this one at-all.

It mashes typing, word-finding and a combat/story element together without any rhyme-or-reason.

Good Word Finder's mix speed with 'hinted wordlists' (because no-one knows every word in any decent wordlist but you can guess the missing ones using logic) - but this doesn't do that.

Good Typing Games vary what you need to type but Word Finders tend to be repetitive (Book Books Look Looks and so on) which isn't challenging anyone

The rest of it is scene-dressing and distraction at best.

So I may be missing something but it really is just a bunch of elements which don't gel and aren't individually as-good as the THOUSANDS of games which do the separate bits already (hell, there are so many I even wrote one once!!)

I've run hot-and-cold over this game for a while now but the great news is that the developer keeps-on tweaking it so I keep trying it.

At first glance it seemed like a game which would work well with a controller but that wasn't an option - then the developer added it but it just doesn't really work well so I'd advise you stick with keyboard/mouse for better control.

The graphics still get very busy - it can be hard to see what's collectable, what's harmful and - indeed - enemies can hide in the 'slightly 3D' effect of walls which is a pain-in-the-ass.

The Arcane Forge seems intersting but right now I have NO idea how it works - so I guess that's for my next play after some updates!?

It's well worth a peek if you like the idea tho

I really want to recommend this because the story and branching exploration is actually pretty good and it's presented really nicely.

It has 2 problems which really mean I can't do that tho - if these wouldn't bother you then please do try it tho!

1 - the game actively encourages 'rewind' (retrying your every choice or battle) until you win easily
2 - the combat is random boring nonsense

The combat combines absolute randomness with repetitive boredom - if it was "Roll 1 to continue" it would be cleverer than it is - the fact I can just retry until I 'get lucky' just insults my intelligence/wastes my time.

As I said tho, if you can look past that aspect of it, there's a nice story to explore here...

I'll admit I've not spent a lot of time with this - for a couple of reasons...

1 - the 'deco' font used for tips is genuinely hard-to-read (esp on larger resolutions)
2 - another font used in dialogues isn't much better (if they'd stuck with 'typewriter' we'd have been fine)
3 - sound effects are terrible-to-non-existent - this makes combat feel weightless and boring
4 - muddy visuals/hard to see what's an enemy/sidekick - things lost in smoke/blood effects etc.
5 - really slow pace (which doesn't help when added to the boring combat)

It's clearly an unbalanced affair - some effort was put into plot and dialogue but I'd argue that's not what people play ARPGs for - they play for boom-click-thunk!?

Given the number of other games which do that (same setting, same zombies etc.) I'm struggling to see why we need one which doesn't give that?

Firstly, the concept is great and it's fun when you first start playing, but it's let-down in execution and appears to be abandoned so I guess won't be seeing any fixes?

Biggest issue - the game lacks tactics and objectives - once you're good at hammering-in 3/4 letter words, that's all you need to do play undefinately.

Another issue is input - using a mouse is fiddly and it lacks native touchscreen support so touch isn't great either.

Lastly, it likes a set (windowed) resolution and doesn't play well with scaling/fullscreen (at least it didn't for me)

Ironically, I found that playing on a tablet via Steam Streaming gave the best result - it scales visually and input seems a little more responsive, but that's an extreme solution and it's still far from perfect.

In summary, it's hard to recommend because it needs tweaking to be more challenging/interesting as well as some technical fixes to make it less frustrating to play.

First up, most of what this game does is GREAT - the graphics are pretty, there's a tonne of content and it's fun.

So why "Not Recommended"?

The game fails to explain it's puzzle mechanics and they don't always make sense. Whenever I've gotten stuck, the solution has never been an "Oh that's clever" moment - it's always been a "Why did that work" or "I didn't even know I could do that" moment :(

Furthermore, the game often offers multiple paths where some are (or appear to be) unsolveable 'yet' - but are they, or have you just failed to guess the mechanics? This leads to a lot of walking around trying stuff (through respawning enemies) and a general feeling of frustration and annoyance.

It's a shame, because much of what the game does is great, but I got tired of guessing whether I had the thing I needed or not or whether that block was 1 pixel out of place or why that thing didn't do the thing it did before and ahhhhhhhhhhhhh........

YMMV but after a couple of hours I realised I'd had enough of it's illogical and guesswork laden puzzles and quit...