Recent reviews by PsychoApeMan

A decent met-rogue-vani-like with a couple of little quirks, but which delivers a fun experience overall.

The interesting, varied enemy designs have really clean animations, enabling a clarity in telegramming attacks which I find to be extremely rare in the genre (or at least, it’s rare that they click with me so well). It immediately rang alarm bells that the UX is unmistakably designed with consoles in mind – and navigating menus is often really clunky and unpleasant without a pad – but I was pleased to discover that gameplay itself actually feels really good on keyboard and mouse.

The combat is enjoyably fluid, and you can dodge almost continuously, meaning that at the standard difficulty level I could dash and slash my way through many encounters while barely taking a scratch. That said, it’s also pretty unpredictable, and sometimes very unforgiving; I was occasionally caught out by a room of enemies which didn’t look particularly impressive, but ended up giving me a damn good kicking.

One element which I have to question is the balancing of the RNG, especially when it comes to weapons and abilities. On one run you might exclusively be given a scant selection of options with mediocre stats and zero synergy, and on the next be handed on a silver platter a devastating combination that obliterates the opposition. Of course, some measure of that is to be expected in a roguelike, but entering a boss fight with a poor setup through no fault of your own just sucks, and feeling like you'd be better off abandoning a pretty lengthy run purely because of RNG is hugely discouraging.

Another unfortunate aspect is that the “fusion” of two characters, which you’d expect to have some pretty substantial impact on gameplay, seems almost entirely inconsequential, almost like an afterthought. It really feels like a wasted opportunity. A related disappointment is that the 3 different playable characters have such minimal sense of personality to them, and the runs are long enough that you are very rarely switching between them, so you don’t build any familiarity with which model correlates with which combat specialisation. They feel totally indistinct, and considering how nifty so many of the enemy designs are, that really seems a shame.

I'd also have to say that the story is really poor, and the voice acting, to be brutally honest, is just awful – I almost immediately felt I had to silence the vocals. Probably my biggest annoyance with the game, though, is how it doesn’t respect your time, and holds you hostage with the threat of losing your progress if you want to quit. I find that totally unacceptable; I should be able to quit whenever I want, and there’s just no excuse for forcing me to keep playing simply because you couldn’t be bothered coding in a save state for when I need to exit.

These issues are obviously frustrating, but all that being said, the core mechanics are what matter most, and on the whole they are really solid. I had a satisfying time with it, so if you’re a fan of the genre and spot the game on sale, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

An absolutely charming, warm-hearted adventure romp through a series of vignettes that do a great job of capturing the imaginative storytelling of kids’ games, while pulling off the rare achievement of actually being consistently, genuinely funny. The art and animations are lovely, and the audio is of a very high standard too.

It also manages to include a reasonable bit of variety, with a scattering of minigame sections among the more standard point-and-click style puzzles, and the latter never have the kind of convoluted logic that leads to tedious trial and error. The puzzles and minigames as a whole are fairly smooth sailing, but there are a few that require a more thoughtful approach, so you don’t just feel like you’re a passenger, obediently clicking your way through the story.

I only had two minor gripes: firstly, that if you accidentally trigger an animation which you’ve already watched, there is no way to cancel, and you just have to sit through the whole thing again. Secondly, that control in the grid-based puzzles is a little sloppy when playing with mouse, causing a few moments of unnecessary frustration. Neither of these came anywhere close to spoiling the experience, though, and overall it was a pleasure to play through.

A *soft* recommendation.

The visual style is hugely vibrant and fun, with smooth, cartoony animations which look great. It has an anarchic energy to it which I really appreciated, but it doesn’t stray into being gratingly wacky.

The basic gameplay concept, of using deductive reasoning (primarily à la minesweeper) to map out safe squares and likely locations for enemies can provide some very satisfying gameplay. For several hours, it kept me highly entertained. I was also genuinely impressed by the fact that when you unlock the new playable characters, they manage to provide a substantial enough change to the core gameplay as to feel genuinely transformative.

That said, there are issues around randomness – perhaps somewhat inevitably when combining a puzzle game with a rogue-lite mindset – which detract more and more from the experience the longer you play. This is not a “perfect information” game, and regardless of how flawless your logic may be, you are routinely forced to simply stab in the dark at what the correct move might be and hope to get lucky.

Some of the characters (and especially the first available) operate in such a way that incorrect guesses in these situations are often not particularly punishing, giving plenty of opportunity to recover afterwards, and having a variety of upgrades that can enable you to just power through when things go wrong. Others, however, feel very poorly balanced in this regard, and sometimes have very limited viable builds which are solid enough to get you to the end of the game.

In all cases, the higher difficulty settings exacerbate these problems, and in a particularly frustrating twist, unlocking new power ups through winning games can be counter-productive and make it even worse. You cannot disable any power ups, so with some characters, the unlocks often only serve to make it even harder for the RNG to smile upon you and offer you that one ability which may be entirely crucial to have a chance of completing a run. Questionable balance is regularly present in rogue-lites, and I can accept it to some degree, but when playing at higher difficulties, the difference between glorious victory and dismal failure usually feels almost entirely unrelated to anything I had any control over, which makes it hard to be invested in the result.

It’s a shame, because I really did have a good deal of fun with the game despite the issues (hence my overall recommendation), but they certainly hold it back from being truly great, and they mean I don’t see myself coming back to it in the future.

Just bloody lovely.

Such a charming, relaxing environment to explore, with carefully crafted puzzles which are never punishing but still satisfying and enjoyably varied, with some understated, gentle storytelling elements along the way. Not very long, but for an indie title where every detail is so lovingly crafted it's easy to see why. A delightful experience that I didn't want to step away from.

So, as I said: 100% certified bloody lovely.

Not a huge amount of content in the early access, but the 3 levels that are here are really enjoyable and very well fleshed out, so I had a great time getting through all the challenges and searching out the collectables. The physics are janky as hell at times, and mostly that's just part of the fun, but a couple of the challenges really require precision which I did find a little maddening... But still compelling! I couldn't quit until I got through them.

Looking forward to coming back when the next level drops!

This is such a clever and original game, with a really palpable sense of style, but never taking itself too seriously and packed with great touches of humour... And yet, I kind of came close to just bouncing off it, which would have been such a shame.

The thing is, in some early missions, It seemed like the game had given me the tools to be highly efficient and slick, and yet I would sometimes complete the missions "successfully" but feeling like I just barely got the job done. Repeat attempts saw little improvement, and convinced me I must be a cack-handed oaf. It felt like I was doing something wrong - surely, in a futuristic cyberpunk heist sim, you're supposed to walk away from each mission in slow motion, feeling like a stone-cold badass, right?

Well, maybe not. I persevered, and something just... clicked. Most of the tools seem very cool on paper, but are actually pretty clunky in practice, and your character ambles around the level with the pace of a sprightly 85 year old... Maybe it's *intentional* that you are a shambolic team of dogsbodies, who nonetheless have got ideas above their station, and taken it upon themselves to engage in epic missions?

Honestly, I guess I'm still not entirely sure if that's the intended vibe, but I feel like it's the essential perspective to fully appreciate the game! With that mindset, I embraced my clumsiness and just dove headfirst into all the quirky, inventive, and most of all fun missions - and I had an awesome time.

If you go into this expecting the mechanics to be polished, you *will* be disappointed. If you want to feel like Ethan Hunt or Danny Ocean... look elsewhere. But there's something really satisfying about being the scrappy underdogs who would never get a second look at a professional agency (this is actually part of the canon - in one of the many fun little details you can find, there is a huge stack of rejection letters showing that no corporation trusts these guys enough to give them a shot), but who have managed to get their hands on some spy tech and will scramble their way to victory against the odds.

I'll admit, I have to join the common criticism in wishing that it was longer. It really does feel like just when you've unlocked all your tools and things are getting interesting, you're already at the end of the game. However, that doesn't detract from the fact that this is a brilliantly unique and engaging indie gem, and it deserves your attention.

Stardew Valley is a game I really love – comfortably my most played title on Steam – so I was hoping this would scratch the same itch, even if it would be asking a lot to imagine it could come close to the same standard. Unfortunately, that was far from my experience, and in fact almost without exception it just did not land for me.

Not the most substantial issue, but the one which first set me off on the wrong track: the visuals. They seemed perfectly serviceable in the trailer and screenshots, but the in-game experience, and especially the regular close-ups, consistently triggered the uncanny register in my lizard brain, therefore feeling creepy and alien rather than the warm, cosy vibes you would hope for.

This is made somewhat worse by the fact that almost none of the “neutral” expressions are relaxed, so you spend a lot of time looking at oddly frozen faces, adding to the unnatural tone. On top of that, in moments when they do become a little more animated, I found there to be a *massive* over-representation of the snarky raised eyebrow, to the point that everyone seems really obnoxious. It’s especially problematic given that multiple characters also have some degree of smirk permanently fixed on their face, so as someone who finds “Dreamworks face” off-putting rather than ingratiating, I often just felt that I didn’t want to spend time with these people.

You might imagine the voice acting would bring enough warmth and humanity to overcome a good deal of the artificiality of these design quirks, but sadly I personally didn’t find that to be the case. I certainly appreciate the effort of having fully voiced dialogue, and I recognise this is a matter of individual preference, but I found several of the performances grating – and *especially* so the main character, which is of course the one you hear the most. As a result, it wasn’t long before I had simply muted the vocals.

I had expected that I would really enjoy feeling like a part of the community, especially considering the obvious efforts to reflect some of the diversity which makes the world a richer place. However, this representation feels so on-the-nose and overt as to come across as box-ticking, and there was never a moment that I felt like I was joining a genuine, organically formed neighbourhood. Another contributing factor to this is that, as different as they may be on the surface, I felt like almost every character predominantly speaks with the same authorial voice, making it more like an artificial hive-mind than a group I could see myself integrating with.

As a final note on the community aspect: the devs evidently wanted to include something akin to a faith group, but presumably wanted to stay away from anything with the slightest Judeo-Christian echo to avoid potentially alienating a large part of the key demographic. So instead, they made the frankly baffling decision to include an unmistakable, intentional parallel for a scientology centre, even making the leader of the local chapter into a potential romance. About half of the community are drinking the Kool Aid, and so will regularly try to convince you how wonderful it is… feeling welcome yet? It blows my mind that the same design document which 100% literally included a list of ethnicities to ensure nobody was overlooked in their super-cosy vision also included “Cutesy version of heinous exploitative cult (sexy leader?)” and everybody involved just went along with it.

That’s about 600 words, and I didn’t actually mention the gameplay yet. Well, it’s… fine. Just about. It’s extremely shallow, mostly very generic, and though nothing is noteworthy for being done particularly well, there’s also no major problems apart from the simplicity of it all. Several times, I found myself thinking I was looking at a mobile game which had pushed out the boat a bit on production values. It’s resolutely… acceptable.

What I wouldn’t consider acceptable is the glaring balance issues. The game economy genuinely seems to be random. If you catch a fish, it might describe itself as common, rare, or even epic – but that seemingly has no bearing whatsoever on how likely you are to encounter it or how much it sells for. Restorative and monetary values of recipes likewise seem to have been randomly assigned – and there is one recipe in particular, made from 2 cheap ingredients that are available in unlimited supply, which inexplicably sells for a vast profit. It seems like no attention to detail at all has been paid in this area. The same is true, and at much more detriment to the player, in the case of some resources – above all, soil.

To craft soil requires randomly spawning weeds, around 2 or 3 of which typically appear each day, and 2 of which are required for each unit. It is agonisingly slow to accumulate, despite often being used in recipes and constructions, some of which require huge amounts. For example, the *first* expansion to your vegetable garden requires 50, and the *first* expansion to your barn another 40. I couldn’t tell you about later expansions, because I didn’t make it that far. It’s interminable.

All of the above might seem more than enough to throw in the towel, but I was still willing to give the game a chance to see how it handled the romantic aspect. In one of the fairly early interactions, there was some flirtatious behaviour and dialogue which felt surprisingly authentic, which had actually impressed me, so I still had some optimism. I began to imagine that all the areas in which the game was lacking might have been because the dev focus was on these relationship events, and so I decided it was worth going a little further down that route to see how it went.

Well… I didn’t make it very far. The *first* thing my prospective partner did on our *first* date was to say, “I really like you! I want to get serious!” – before I’d even had a chance to take a mouthful of food! I was offered 2 responses: either to agree with his frantic urgency to “get serious”, or to say no. Easy choice! And, as it turned out, I crushingly slammed him into the friend zone in the process. Which felt like a fitting point to abandon any attempt at a relationship with this game.

When I first loaded up the game, I was planning on just having a little blast to take a breather from a more intense gaming session. Then I played it all night. And the next night… And the next… It turns out my inner alchemist was just waiting to be unleashed.

The process of imbuing potions with effects is extremely abstracted; starting from the centre of a hazard-laden map, you must reach and activate nodes, each of which provides a specific power to the finished concoction. You navigate by adding items to your cauldron, with the assorted ingredients each extending your path along differently shaped routes, which you can modify to some extent based on how much you grind the raw materials. There are also bonus experience points to be picked up as you work your way around the map, and aside from throwing more stuff into the pot, you can tactically reposition yourself through when/if you choose to stir, boil, and dilute your mixture.

Aside from a couple of little twists, that’s really all there is to it. It certainly couldn’t be called deep or complex – but, for me at least, it really *is* satisfying. This is helped by the fact that you can be extremely precise in every aspect of the process, choosing exactly how much to grind, when to stir, whether to dilute… This game is by no means trying to be any kind of simulation, but that sense of exacting meticulousness really fits the theme, and helps to make you feel like you are performing a delicate experiment. Also, being in complete control means that when a potion blows up in your face, you do kick yourself knowing you are fully to blame, and conversely that when you make a plan of action and execute it perfectly as intended, you do feel the fuzzy warm satisfaction of a job well done.

Every interaction in the entire game feels extremely tactile, which makes it so much more engaging and fun. It’s a welcome little touch when working in the garden or dealing with customers, but in the case of actually making the potions, it definitely plays a huge part in why I enjoy the game so much. I'm not just clicking a mouse! I'm clutching my mortar and smashing things to pieces, scooping up the pieces and throwing them in the pot, grabbing the spoon and giving it all a stir, then taking hold of the bellows and carefully pumping to my desired level of boil! The immersive nature of these interactions is probably the most significant key ingredient in the winning formula, if you will.

All of that said, there are a few issues here. In the early game, everything works wonderfully: gradually uncovering the map, working hard to make the most of your ingredients, trying to build up some cash so you can grab lots of useful stock from vendors when they come along, and eagerly using experience points to unlock new abilities and perks. However, this is a comparatively short phase of the game. Pretty soon money becomes so abundant as to be meaningless, which inevitably means ingredient scarcity also fades into insignificance, so the challenge of making potions is diminished, uncovering the entire map becomes trivial, and you soon feel like you’ve already unlocked everything meaningful from the skill tree too.

The pacing really hits a brick wall at this stage, because the only thing preventing you from moving forward in the overarching quest and unlocking new stuff to play around with is literally just waiting for the right vendor to turn up, to sell you the next MacGuffin you need to advance. This progression gating felt hugely frustrating to me, especially when I can look at *several* upcoming chapters in my grand “Alchemist’s Path” quest book, and see that, essentially, every single task has already been completed except for “buy a thing from a bloke (when he finally turns up)”. And of course, considering I am sitting on a mountain of gold and otherwise have no need to buy anything, that does not seem a very challenging endeavour. As a result, even though I still enjoy making potions, the fact that I am spending day after day without actually recording any progress or trying out new features because of this arbitrary block makes it feel like I’m just going through the motions, and so the basic gameplay loop starts to feel a little stagnant.

There is also one other fly in the ointment, which isn’t as major, but similarly adds to the frustration: there is pretty frequently a lack of clarity in customer requests. In some cases, this is because they are uncertain or intentionally being indirect, which makes sense thematically and can even be funny at times (though you can nonetheless easily get annoyed trying to work out what they need). Other times, however, it is simply that the phrasing is imprecise and leaves room for (mis)interpretation – meaning that you can spend a long time making an elaborate elixir which you’re sure is perfect, and then when you proudly hand it over to them, they simply tell you “That’s not really what I wanted. I’m not paying much for *this* garbage.” It can deflate you when moments before you felt like you’d done a great job, and demotivate you from going the extra mile (especially considering that your coinpurse is already bursting at the seams, so receiving a satisfaction bonus is pretty meaningless in any case).

Overall, though, I still really enjoy and appreciate the game. The visual style and vibe are really pleasing, and it also occasionally displays a nice sense of humour, which is a plus. The gameplay is pretty simple, but encourages precision and a little thinking ahead, which makes for a fun and satisfying combination, and also works perfectly if I want to engage with something which isn’t too demanding while listening to a podcast or half-watching a film or series on a second screen.

An easy recommendation.

I will start with a confession…

I often feel like I just *hate* Dark Souls.

Not because I wasn’t satisfied with my experience playing the game, though – far from it. It was deeply engaging, original, and in a multitude of aspects, I would say it’s frankly remarkable. But the industry as a whole just *insisted* on taking precisely the wrong lessons from its snowballing success.

“Wait – this is wildly inscrutable, and often brutally punishing. You people secretly yearn to have a bad time? You want to be confused and abused? Treated like trash? You get off on receiving a good spanking?”

And so, far too often, clunky and opaque mechanics, a wild lack of balance, and even a copious excess of friction in the player experience are seen as no longer needing to be avoided. Hours upon hours of game dev poured into titles which, at best, never prioritised actually feeling good to play, and at worst, cynically neglected addressing problems, because they could all be dismissed with the convenient handwaving of “But it’s *supposed* to be like that. Spanky-spanky, remember? You know you want it.”

It’s so tiresome. The souls-fatigue runs deep. So much so, that every time yet another new souls-influenced title gets touched by hype, my first instinct is to question whether it’s actually going to be remotely enjoyable. Then into the limelight steps Clair Obscur, and like a chump, I find myself getting drawn in. Genuinely believing that this one seems different, this one seems special…

But, who would have thought it? To coin a phrase – sacre bleu! It actually lives up to my expectations.

Firstly, and most importantly: it wholeheartedly embraces many elements of souls-like games, while recognising that doing so doesn’t mean you have to follow every single convention of the genre, and are in fact still free to also take inspiration from elsewhere. It effectively avoids following the typical template of any single genre, and instead manages to find a really solid balance of classic JRPG gameplay peppered with a host of souls-like mainstays. In the process, it feels fresher and more interesting than anything either genre has offered in many years.

It needed to nail the combat – and it seriously smashed it. Adding real-time defensive reactions brings intensity and dynamism to the turn-based framework, which in itself offers a level of complexity and structured intentionality which isn’t really viable in real-time. On top of that, I feel like I have *never* seen party-based combat handled better. Every party member feels truly individual, and so choosing your active members presents a tantalising host of possibilities. This is compounded by the genuine variety in modifiers from the weapons which they can each decide between, the array of passive skills to choose from, and the pool of combat actions which you must select for each. There are dozens of potential builds you can fine tune for every individual member, and so making those choices while taking into account possible synergies between active members offers hugely satisfying strategic depth. Combat is awesome - and when the entire group is attacked and you successfully parry to pull off a combined counter, it always feels epic.

The vocal performances also really stand out as a high point. My engagement with stories in games is usually severely limited by the quality of the acting on display, but I’m hard pushed to think of a better example than this. The entire cast does a great job, and despite some occasionally sloppy sound editing resulting in a few awkward pauses or interruptions, they have a feeling of authenticity which is vanishingly rare, making them really compelling and keeping me interested throughout.

The world-building also paints a really interesting backdrop for the story, and the excellent soundtrack appropriately heightens the emotions. Of course, it looks gorgeous too. The creature and character designs are interesting and diverse, as are the different environments you encounter, which are also potently atmospheric. The level designs are layered and do a great job of hiding secrets without being obnoxious or convoluted.

All in all, every aspect of the game shows polish and passion, bursting with new ideas and clever implementations of old ones. Especially when considering the size of the development team, this is a monumental achievement. I bloody love it.

Here’s hoping it leaves a long shadow, and inspires a wave of souls-lite innovation!

Turn-based strategy, when everything goes smoothly, can make you feel like a clinically efficient badass. As such, it fits perfectly with the fantasy of being on an epic quest in a samurai movie, slicing and skewering your way through the scores of villains foolish enough to get in your way.

The simplicity to the visuals could, at first glance, lead you to mistake the gameplay for being pretty basic, albeit fun. The truth is that there’s actually a meaty depth to the strategy which can hold its own against anything else the genre has to offer, and the fact it’s presented in such a lean package just adds to how satisfying it is. Biding your time, to position yourself optimally (while manipulating your foes into doing the same) and to line up the perfect combo of attacks in the correct sequence, then letting rip and obliterating an entire wave of enemies in a single turn – it just feels awesome.

I’ve slaughtered the Shogun quite a few times now, but I still feel like I’m just scraping the surface, and the core loop is so enjoyable that I’m keen to dig deeper. The replay value from the randomised elements alone would be substantial (I can always pour plenty of hours into a good rogue-lite), but considering the variety in the playable characters and the new challenges posed by the ratcheting difficulty options, this feels like a little package with a surprisingly generous amount on offer. I can easily see it finding its way into my rotation of games which I return to again and again over the long-term – the rarefied “evergreen” collection in my Steam library.

Clever, polished, satisfying fun.