Recent reviews by Shaaria

It's unfortunate that such a neat concept is implemented so terribly.

The game is a buggy mess. Do not buy it. It's the first game I've ever had to refund. I literally cannot complete the tutorial; the door-hacking minigame got confused which side I was on and my key presses were altering the wrong set of numbers. I quit out to try again and now any time I try to start the tutorial the game just gets stuck on the loading screen forever. This was after it completely ignored my changes to window resolution until I toggled fullscreen on and then back off.

I feel deceived because this game isn't technically in Early Access, yet feels like it is with the sheer number of bugs and the pace of active development. Maybe it'll be worth it in another half-year or so. Until then, don't touch it.

I really wish I could recommend this game.

It has a solid premise: Deck builder crossed with roguelike. Your deck determines the events and rewards that you'll get as you play. Periodically you get into Arkham-style combat centered on combos and counters.

Unfortunately, the problem is that as you progress, the game leans more and more heavily onto the combat system. And the combat does NOT scale well.

You will go from fighting 2-3 bandits who can only swing at you with their swords to fighting eight huge lizards with tons of health, fire breath attacks, shields of their own and unblockable counters if you hit them twice. In that time, your equipment remains pretty much the same as it was when you started the game. You get no new moves, no new abilities, nothing to help deal with the fact that the enemies are getting stronger and stronger and you... aren't. You always start with 100 HP and a nonmagical weapon that improves from 20 attack power to... 25, by the time you're on the final stretch. Each boss is a reasonable challenge in their own right, but then the final boss is a boss rush that's so disgustingly unfair that if you try and google anything about it, you'll find nothing positive written about it. You face three bosses at once, all of whom can't be comboed reasonably and whose attacks 50-100% of the time cannot be countered. Even with the best loadout I could possibly hope for going into the final boss I got crushed.

I hope that the sequel learned from the mistakes of the original.

Recommended, with an asterisk.

The game is clearly intended for CSD1 vets. If you haven't played CSD1, you will find yourself dumped into the deep end with little to no guidance here.

It's been improved in many ways while keeping the fast-paced core of the gameplay. The recipes are now very standardized and all the silly gimmicks that made several recipes in the original a pain in the neck are gone - kebabs are no longer the Worst Thing Ever, wine doesn't take forever to serve, soup no longer makes you despise its presence on the menu, etc. YMMV on whether or not this is a good thing as all recipes are now "hit the right buttons in the right order" with no timing mechanisms or context switches.

They've implmented fast-food style holding stations, which let you make several batches of a food at once. You are no longer cooking an entire pot of soup for 1 person; it makes 6 servings that can be instantly served. Some recipes still require a little bit of prep afterward but many go straight out the door. Side Orders share space with these, and they give you an extra 15 seconds of customer patience (before orders start to slide off the screen). If you are having trouble, you can add more side orders to buy more time.

The problem with CSD2 is that they haven't really fixed the issue of the game eventually becoming a chore to play; it just takes longer (66 hours vs. 30 for CSD1, for me). The restaraunt management simulator is gone (but is promised to be added Soon(tm)) so now it's just a series of challenge stages with a pre-set menu. Sure, there's a free-play option, but there's no real point to bothering with it. The speed at which you unlock new stages, and thus, new food is quite quick until you hit the Level 50 mark, which is where both level gain and food variety slow down massively. Why have an extended endgame if there's little new content in it?

Axing the management aspect also means the mini-games are gone too, which helped break up CSD1's experience. No more catering parties, iron chef challenges, or other things to help you get specific, complicated foods down (since the range of complexity is vastly decreased).

Another problem is that most recipes beyond the starting ones have key-bindings that make the recipes Fake Difficult to fill in. It's wildly inconsistent; it feels like multiple different people did the keybinds, where one guy went "I'll keep ingredients the same across as many recipes as possible" and another went "I'll make them as convenient as possible for this recipe only". It eventually got so bad (particularly with the eastern foods) that I switched to Mouse+Keyboard controls.

It's still fun, it's better than the original, but it still has problems. It's also still in development, so these problems may go away in time.

A fusion between faced-paced shooters like Quake and first-person dungeon crawlers like Delver or Barony. An incredibly short game designed to be replayed many times, as each playthrough unlocks more things - you get extra weapons and such to play with just by playing the game, regardless of whether you win or die horribly.

You're a magical apprentice undertaking the trial of the Ziggurat, which entails going from room to room shooting monsters with magic wands/spells/staves/explosives. There's a fair number of different monsters and all the weapons are fairly equivalent in power, differing in how they are used, and whether they are good against one monster or against crowds. You're encouraged to cycle between multiple weapon types, since each weapon has its own mana pool, and only the basic wand regenerates mana.

It's got a ton of replay value, as the ziggurat is procedurally generated each time, and you'll always end up with different weapons. It forces you NOT to settle into one reliable strategy since you will almost never get the same combination of weapons, and they have to be used in different ways, which forces things to stay fresh - it's well-designed. There's also like 15-20 characters with different play styles on top of that, three base difficulty levels, a Gauntlet mode (one room that lasts until you die) and an Endless mode (the normal game but the ziggurat goes on forever).

Definitely recommended. It's incredibly easy to pick up, but it keeps you on your toes and is a great short game.

Simurgh is a worker-placement game somewhat like Agricola, but with some notable improvements.

For one, most of the game locations are multi-unit, so you cannot simply run interference against other players, and being the first player is not particularly advantageous. Turns are quite fast, but there is a great deal of strategy going into each move.

The tl;dr version of the rules is that on each turn, you must either place a worker, or recall some/all of your workers. Workers come in two types: Spearmen and Dragonriders, with the only important distinction being that some locations are dragonrider-only. In addition to this 'major action', there are 'minor actions' you can take, such as advancing in quests, using dragon abilities, or placing tiles. There are various resources you can collect and spend, and you also have some dragons, which have unique abilities that usually involve exchanging resources.

It's not a terribly complicated game, and it even has some slightly simplified rules for those new to the worker-placement genre. Plus it's 2-5 players rather than the usual 3+ of many games, so it's great for a small group. Definitely fun if you like the genre.

Unlike the other DLCs, this one is only two maps, and one of those is short enough that it's more like half a level. Sure, the weather effects are cool and all, but that hardly matters. Compared to Drachenfels and Kazak Azgaraz, this is just a brief, mediocre disappointment. Wait for it to go on sale.

I just finished my first playthrough and am eager to start another.

Angels with Scaly Wings is a visual novel oriented towards replaying it to see what other paths you can take, even facilitating it by allowing auto-skipping of previously seen dialogue by holding Ctrl. The characters are varied and interesting. The presentation is minimalist but does what it needs to do very well. It presents a mystery, exposes bits of the story to you at a good pace and intermingles it with character development. The character personalities are well done, as they don't fixate on a single thing and all have their own mix of interests.

I don't usually go for visual novels, but this is a particularly well-executed one, I feel. Definitely recommended.

Edit: Having now finished the game with the best ending, I do still recommend it. I'm not a conoisseur of visual novels by any stretch - but I enjoyed the game and interacting with the characters. I had fun, and that's the most important thing for the review.

This game has a lot of undeserved negative reviews. Here's what I hope is something a little more impartial.

Space Rogue is an obviously FTL-inspired game in the same genre. However, this game is not, nor does it try to be, "FTL, but better". If that's what you're expecting, you WILL be disappointed (and that's likely the source of the negative reviews). Instead, Space Rogue should be recognized as being "Kinda like FTL, but different in almost every aspect".

So, aside from cosmetic changes, what's different? It's quite a long list. First, here are things that were removed:
- You have no Fuel count, no Missile count, and no Drone count. The related systems are always usable.
- There are no Doors, Cameras, or Piloting subsystems. Your ship is always able to jump/evade, you can always see inside both ships, and the doors always permit passage.
- On the default difficulty you have no time limit and can jump around between systems all you want. (Higher/custom difficulties can impose a time limit for a more FTL-ish experience.)

Here are things that were added:
- Monster fights, where instead of an enemy ship, you fight some tentacle monster, crystalline creature, or whatever.
- A new section, the Main Computer, and its associated Battle Cartridges. These give short-term boosts with a cooldown on them such as cloaking, shield boosting, setting fires in the enemy ship, instant repairs, etc. This replaces systems like the Cloaking and Mind Control systems from FTL with something more flexible.
- A new section, Life Support, which is a combination of the Oxygen and Medbay sections from FTL.
- The ship's hull is now an upgradeable ship section. Upgrading it increases the ship's max HP.
- Persistent events that occur at random and have a global effect (both you and enemies) for some number of jumps.
- A new currency/resource, Tritanium. Credits are used to buy weapons, drones, and repairs; Tritanium is used to buy Battle Cartridges and to upgrade/install ship systems. You don't buy systems, you just install them into your ship when you have enough Tritanium.
- A new enemy-only section, the cargo hold. Destroy it during the battle and the ship dumps the cargo in it, which results in bonus rewards after the battle ends.
- One of your starting units is designated as the Captain; if they get killed, this is a game over.
- Units come in different classes (engineer, navigator, or warrior). Engineers repair stuff and can man specific systems to make them more effective. The navigator (who is your captain) can man any system. The warriors fight well but can't man systems.
- Units gain EXP and levels. At a level-up you can choose a bonus to one of their stats (HP, damage, repair speed). Level 3 engineers pick a system that they can man.
- Roaming ships can appear on the map, resulting in an extra event if you arrive at a system with one still in it.
- There are multiple missions.
- An extremely intricate custom difficulty option has been added. You can tweak almost anything in the game to make it harder or easier, and you get more in-game experience for harder games. You can also make the galaxy bigger for a longer game.

Here's stuff that's been changed:
- Ship sections have HP counts that are typically multiples of 50, and weapons do numeric damage as well.
- Your shield's value is also numeric.
- When shields are brought down, some of the leftover damage punches through and damages the targeted ship system.
- Missile weapons have a salvo size. Once you fire all the missiles in the salvo, the salvo has to be reloaded, which usually takes about 4x longer than a normal cooldown.
- You still have a certain number of weapon/drone slots, but these go up as you upgrade the corresponding system.
- All battles start paused, and all your weapons are ready to fire immediately. Your opening salvo can count for a lot.
- As long as your teleporter is online, your crew will automatically be brought back upon destruction of an enemy ship, even if the teleporter is still recharging. This allows for more aggressive teleporter usage.
- New content is unlocked just by playing the game. Whether you win or lose, as long as you make progress, you gain experience. When a game ends for good (you win, or you lose and do NOT load the last save) that experience is cashed in and you unlock new ships, new missions, new perks (basically, permanent bonuses that lead to a specific play style).

Finally, here's stuff that's exactly the same as it is in FTL:
- Missiles ignore shields.
- Shields block energy weapons and flak ("cannon", in Space Rogue) weapons.
- There are different races that do different things, though Space Rogue obviously has its own unique set of races (plus, of course, the common and uninteresting humans).
- You can win by killing all the enemy crew (BUT - and I think this is a bug, not an intended mechanic - if your teleporter is offline when this happens, you lose your boarding party as if the ship had been destroyed!)
- Hull breaches suck oxygen out of a room and get repaired before any other systems in the room.
- Fires can start in a room and must be put out by the crew.
- You can't jump out of a system until your engines charge. The enemy must do the same if they want to try and flee.
- An in-game tutorial does an excellent job of showing you the ropes.
- Shops are your friend, and can repair you too.

So! Ultimately, the real question here isn't how Space Rogue matches up to FTL, but whether or not Space Rogue is fun. And I think that yes, it is, as long as you take it on its own value and don't try to make apples-to-oranges comparisons to other games. It has lots of replay value, and if you're bored of FTL, it's a good way to re-experience the genre. Whether it's better or worse is purely subjective, but the one thing you can say with 100% certainty is that it's different. And that's a good thing.

If you like co-operative tabletop games, Darkest Night will be a fantastic addition to your collection. And the $7 price tag for the TTS version blows away the $140 or so the physical copy would cost, especially if you're like me and have nobody to play with in person.

You play a medieval RPG party on a quest to save the land from the forces of evil headed by The Necromancer. There are 13 heroes in the TTS version: 9 base + 4 from the first expansion, maybe they'll add the second expansion later but don't count on it. Of these, you take four, and split them between the number of players - this maintains game balance, as there's always the same number of heroes, and the same number of resources available to the players. With these heroes, you will venture forth into the conquered lands and fight a guerilla war.

The game does a fantastic job of maintaining the atmosphere: you have no hope of winning conventionally, almost everywhere has been overrun, it's only a matter of time until you lose, and you must remain hidden or the Necromancer will come after you to stomp out the final resistance against him. This last part is done with "Secrecy", a character stat that represents how well you're hidden, and increases as you move and hide and decreases when you expose yourself by attacking things or are detected by scouting enemies.

Your goal is to find enough keys to obtain three holy relics and return them to the monastery to perform a ritual to cleanse the land of the Necromancer's presence. But, in a fantastic design choice, you can also just pick up one relic and go defeat the necromancer in combat for a more direct solution - though this will only work with a party that has good fighting skill and pools their efforts together to fight the necromancer. The only way to lose is for the Necromancer to overrun the Monastery (the last safe place in the land). Even if a character dies, you can keep playing; it's a setback, not an elimination from the game.

It's a fantastic co-op game, and you can even play it solo if you are so inclined. It does the Disaster Management style of gameplay very well, and it's well-balanced so that most games will come down to the wire. It uses a very strong bell curving system where you roll some numbers of dice and if ANY of them is high enough, you succeed, working very heavily in the player's favor (as long as you don't have my Contagious Bad Luck). And the expansion adds new content without any major mechanics changes, so you can pick it up and add it in on your first game with almost no added complexity. It has tons of replay value too: the different hero combinations, the different starting board states, and the fact that each hero has 4 potential starting abilities, but you only get to start with 3 of those.

Disclaimer: Played close to the end of its Early Access phase.

Do you remember the original Phantasy Star's dungeons? Or maybe Shining In The Darkness? Or that old Windows 98 screensaver of the maze? StarCrawlers is an RPG with optional roguelike elements where the dungeons take on that same first-person perspective through dungeons that only permit travel in cardinal directions. Build up a squad of characters in a futuristic setting and get powers ranging from eldritch tentacles of doom, to covering a screen in explosives and/or explosions, to constantly making enemies trip over the traps you've laid.

Each character has three separate skill trees that you can mix-and-match as you please, and there are 8 characters (of which you can take 4 on any given mission even if you recruit extras) so there's lots of potential for replayability, even before you account for the extra difficulty settings and optional permadeath. The randomized loot is plentiful enough that you generally get good stuff for your characters, and nobody is locked to particular types of equipment so you can't get completely useless equipment.

A fantastic game and a very creative re-imagining of an old genre, updated with modern graphics and the ability to free-look and interact with your environment. Highly recommended, although you may want to wait for the full release - as it stands the Early Access version does not conclude the story, so you just get to the point where you stop getting story missions (but continue to get procedural random ones).