Recent reviews by Dylancyclone

As someone who doesn't like the "Open World Survival Craft"-ing genre, this is probably my favorite (and possibly the only one I've truly enjoyed).

What sets it apart is simple: It's got a hand-crafted and interesting map, and a solid story/goals to aim for.

So many Open World Survival Crafting games plop you in a randomly generated world that's either so generic there's no point to explore except to gather materials, or so barren that its just a chore to get to the actual points of interest. Abiotic Factor is set in a research facility that has been made to be explored, with every area having thought built into it.

Instead of the goal of the game just being "get out" or "survive," Abiotic Factor leads you around a proper tour of the world giving meaning to the entire facility around you. There's no where in the world that's just "there" for no reason. The facility is a sprawling active place that makes you want to explore it, rather than being forced to.

This is a remake done right. Risk of Rain was Hopoo's first game and while it is still one of my favorites, it definitely had a couple rough edges. This version polishes everything up from the mechanics to the visuals to the UX to the music, with options to return all the changes back to the way they were for purists.

Hopoo Games took everything they've learned from all their releases since the original Risk of Rain to come back and create an even better version of an already awesome experience.

It's easy to compare this game to Antichamber, and I can't help but do it with the utmost admiration. The beautiful fractal worlds combined with the non-euclidean traversal through them and extremely creative puzzles make this game a ton of fun to explore and soak in.

A cute game that is more fun than it sounds like

The tavern bustles with the usual mixture of jesters, tired workers, drunkards, and innkeepers. In one corner sits a young man waiting for his order of soup. The local "heroes" enter through the doors closest to him, quickly scan the room, and lock eyes with him with the tact of a bunch of toddlers. The dwarf quickly turns around to close the door, before opening his rucksack for a tool he's been saving for just this occasion. The rogue pretends to admire some artwork behind the man before stuffing it down his pants and turning towards his back. The elf trips towards the man, bumbling out the first words that comes to mind as he directs the his attention away from the others. "So uh, that weather huh?" The man couldn't even respond before a bellow of smoke emanated from where the dwarf was standing. The tavern turned to look at the commotion, but by the time the smoke cleared, all that remained was the corpse of what used to be the man -- and a figure dashing out of the tavern who looked kinda like the rogue. Not only was the man's corpse splayed across the floor, everyone soon noticed that the man was missing his entire head, as well as the contents of his pockets. The flabbergasted tavern keep quickly ran in the direction the rogue went in search of answers, but returned only a few minutes later calm and collected; though notably with a few more coins in her hand and with a solemn understanding that "he probably deserved it anyways..."

My group and I enacted this "brilliant" plan with one goal in mind: to bring back the head of this man to his former master's ghost, whom he had killed. We agreed to do this only because I had "accidentally" eaten the master's body (I, as an elf, learn the memories of the recently departed by eating body parts). I didn't notice that the spirit lingered and watched me eat his body. This understandably angered him, so we agreed to do this to appease him. However, instead of simply handing over the head to the master, it was my plan to show it to him, and then promptly eat it in front of him. This angered him even more as he couldn't get the closure he needed to rest. After pestering him again after he wanted nothing to do with me, he asked if he wanted to consume anything more of his to torment him further such as his soul itself, and I tell you, I would've if I could've.

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Stories aside, this game is great. It plays like a DnD game that has that balance of a serious story line you can get invested in and the leeway to go against the grain and murder-hobo anything. The amount of things this game accounts for is amazing, the whole idea of eating the master's apprentice in front of him was just a random "how would the game react to this" and it felt like something that would come up dynamically at a live tabletop game. There's nothing saying you can't just throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks, we've come across major story characters who were so vile that they didn't deserve to live, so as judge, jury, and executioners, he had an accident and failed to return to town one day. We've also come across characters who we devote everything to, and support them even when it gets in the way of a quest. And in both situations the game feels more alive because of it. NPCs react to other characters deaths and act accordingly. There's been times where our actions in the past have ramifications hours later in the play through that none of us saw coming.

The game plays with up to four people, but players can also take control of companion characters to fill up to four (so that they control multiple characters). Once you get past a certain point in the game, you can essentially respec your entire character for free, allowing you to change classes or tweak things if you want a change of playstyle.

I don't know of another way to say that this adds another dimension to portal in every sense of the word. It literally adds a new dimension in the form of the future versions of every map, it metaphorically adds a new dimension to each of the puzzles by adding a third portal that follows the same laws as the first two like conserving momentum, and it logically adds another dimension to how you have to consider approaching each puzzle because you now have to consider not only how you are going to solve the puzzle, but in what order you're going to do it in.

It does all this in a way that's so novel and unlike other portal puzzles that it'll completely stump someone who's completely familiar with portal, but without being frustrating about it or by making the player feel like they have no chance of figuring it out.

It's not without it's small problems, though none of the issues I encountered are related to gameplay. You can only load your most recent save, so be sure not to accidentally start a new game which creates an autosave, or accidentally reload a quicksave from awhile back. Navigating some of the settings were an issue, with descriptions of the settings constantly popping up in the way or some settings just absent, but nothing too bad.

Overall, it's fresh new portal puzzles with a game changing twist from the base game that'll force you to think. It's quick, it's free, but I'd gladly pay money from it.

There's a certain charm when a game is able to introduce it's elements to player without shoving them in your face, the invisible tutorial, or one blended so well with the game that it all feels natural.

This is not that game.

This game explicitly tells the player nothing about how the game works and expects you to figure it all out on your own, which isn't an inherently bad thing but the way it's done in the Witness is frustrating and borderline pretentious. Don't get me wrong, when I heard about this game coming out way back when I was hyped about a puzzle game that let the player control the entire experience from start to finish. But when the game punishes you for not following rules you have no chance of knowing exist or unabashedly wastes your time under the guise of a clever puzzle, it's not an experience I thought worth completing or worth recommending to others. Many of the puzzles fall under the trap where if you are not thinking like the develop thought when designing the puzzle, you are not going to solve it. Subtle context clues and hints blend in with the rest of the world to the point where they become indistinguishable from world details or atmosphere. Then for the game to laugh at you and set you back a bit of progress when you make a mistake just amounts to negative reinforcement for something out of your control.

If a truly open ended puzzle game with no guardrails and deeply embedded (and necessary to progress) contextual hints sounds appealing, give it a shot, just be prepared to spend a lot of time fighting not just the puzzles but also the game itself.

(Just one hour on record because I played outside of steam as well)

What's this? A horror game that doesn't rely on jump scares to be scary? And it's four-player cooperative so you can share the experience with friends? It's like a dream.

Phasmophobia is a rare game that relies on atmosphere and mystery to build a spooky game. You always have a definite goal, but the way to reach that goal is like a puzzle that changes every round. It builds a game that we've come back for more even after we feel confident that we wont be scared (even though screams can still be heard from us so called professionals).

Another thing worth mentioning is that if you've got a VR headset, it is absolutely worth trying in VR. After I got to the point where I felt comfortable running around like I owned the place, I tried the game in VR and instantly felt like I was playing it for the first time again.

This is a game that's best played with full immersion, at night, with all lights off, using only in-game voice chat so the game can play it's dastardly (yet always fair) tricks. And on that note, try your best to not read anything about the game. A mystery's no fun if you know how the clockwork behind it works. Even now I don't know exactly how some mechanics of the game works, and I'd like to keep it that way and speculate how it could work.

As someone who doesn't play or usually enjoy point-and-click games, the first time I saw this game I gave it a solid pass. Reading some of the other reviews people mentioned that the audience for the game was small, and I thought I just wasn't a part of that audience.
Then I learned that the writer for "The Sea Will Claim Everything" was the same person behind "The Talos Principle", one of the only games I deliberately read through every bit of text in the game because I couldn't get enough, and I recognized the composer from their other works. In fact, Chris Christodoulou is the only artist so for that I've ahead and purchased their entire discography. I checked the album and saw that I had already listened to it for nearly twice the playtime of many of the other reviewers here. At that point I decided it was worth a try -- and I am so glad I did.

For a game that boasts walls of text, I still found myself reading everything, clicking every object just to see the descriptions of each mushroom or book, and enjoying every line of it. I never really felt stuck at any point, the game never turned into a "find the magic pixel" (unless you wanted to read the best book titles), and I never felt like I was lost or without a next step. Even if I couldn't remember each of the character's names, each of them were memorable to the point where I could go "Oh yeah, the spice guy was asking for this, and I know exactly where to find him."
The game is an absolute delight, full of charm, and dripping with details. It's not a game for everyone, but if the thought of reading walls of text drenched in character, thought, and dashes of philosophy while listening to music that you can't help but sit and listen to tickles your fancy, "The Sea Will Claim Everything" is certainly worth a try.

Downright incredible. Not only is this the absolute best VR experience I've had, it was also the most comfortable and the most immersive experience. Going in I was worried that VR by nature would be too exhausting for longer play sessions and the flow of the game would be broken up, but I can safely say that I never felt motion sick while playing (while I have gotten a little queasy playing similar games like Boneworks), and ended up playing in longer sessions than I have been able to in any other game.

The game is truly immersive. I never got scared in Half-Life 1, 2, or the episodes in any way further than a jumpscare, but a certain chapter in this game definitely got to me. I could pinpoint the exact moment (which isn't a jumpscare and doesn't actually have any time pressure) where I thought "This is the most scared I've been in any game I have played." This game shows the potential and the power of actually enveloping you in a world where you can physically look up and down at a human-sized figure in front of you. What might look small on a pancake screen (like a headcrab) feels massive and physical in VR.

Even on the lowest settings the game looks fantastic. There are plentiful points where I though that something would make a beautiful wallpaper or I found myself just kinda looking around for a bit before actually doing the objective. On that note, the fear from older games of not exploring every path is compounded here now that you can open up every cabinet, search through every drawer, and inspect every box for goods, and enjoy every moment of it. I spent a solid five minutes opening and closing drawers, cabinets, and doors just to listen to the sounds and the creeks it makes. Just like the gravity gloves, none of these mechanics ever got old.

Absolutely worth it. The first thing I did after finishing the credits was boot up the last autosave and go through the end again. If I wasn't sharing the VR rig with others I'd have probably started another playthrough by now.