Recent reviews by highwayman

DEATH AWAITS!

Cruel is a post-void inspired hallway shooter, I think it takes the formula and adds onto it successfully, while giving it an awesome aesthetic touch on it.

Playing it has a rythm game feel to it, where enemies are notes you have to hit and your tools are the instruments.
Enemy variety supports this, with each enemy having special quirks and a few good ways to deal with them. Cultists have their shots easily parried, policemen dont parry you when you stun them with a kick, the kobolds explode harmlessly if you kick them away instead of shooting them, and so on and so forth.
It plays incredibly smooth because most of your actions are independent from eachother, as far as reasonable. You can be sliding through a doorway, that you are kicking open mid-slide, while drinking a can to heal yourself, whip to the side to nail a cultist in the head near the end of your slide and throw your melee weapon to catch the shotgunner behind him because its slightly faster to do such than to wait for your gun to refire.

There is a surprising amount of depth allowed for such a simple game, kicks throw and stun enemies and are sometimes smarter than shooting, they also throw enemies out of windows killing them at no cost to ammo or melee durability. Melee weapons can be thrown for great damage, which also isn't tied to the swing cooldown. You can blow up a cultist's head and immediately throw your weapon into a melee enemy, without waiting, which ontop of being incredibly cool is smart to do because you can just pick up the melee weapon that that enemy dropped.

At the end of each floor your can sacrifice your healing items to gain a perk, or reroll your choices. Some perks are really good, some are very situational, some are not that good. It's a good mix, making rerolling worth a lot. Not getting hit is rewarded with a stronger run because you can reroll your perks more often. Well designed, nice.

In game you are expected to pace yourself according to how good you are at it. You don't lose health with time like in post-void and the fire chasing you is rather forgiving in almost all rooms, this gives you a window to just slow yourself down a little to not get overwhelmed with enemies, as well as do some rudimentary resource management, with juggling cans while at capacity, replacing your melee weapon with a full durability one, and so on. This is never a bother - it's barely a few seconds whenever it does happen and most of the rooms end with you not even stopping and bursting through the next door anyways. It does make you feel smart when you do take a second to take inventory and the short moments of slowing yourself down feel tactical and never turn frustrating.

The only real criticism i have of the game, is that the unbelievably good soundtrack gets less and less to the good parts of the songs as you get faster, since a new song is started on each floor. It would be cool if you had an option to just have the current track run with a dampened filter on while on your way to the next floor, so the tracks can be enjoyed in full, which they should.

This review is more of a love letter than an actual review, because if you really like these kinds of games, you were probably already sold in the first few moments of the trailer. I can really only tell you that it is as good as it looks and that there isn't really a nasty underside that isn't shown. It's still getting updates even if it works as a full game right now.

Long review. Sorry.

Mines of Titan has that je ne sais quoi that it needs as a roguelite with obvious inspirations from its corner of vidyajames. You might be down here because the review score isn't as good as similarily sized titles, though that's the case because it's not quite a crowd pleaser with its mechanics.

Now that's not supposed to read as "Cruelty Squad", but it does mean that there is A Lot of a lot to keep track of, your mistakes are punished and that you are very much dared to outsmart Titan. Many reviews complain about things that are par for the course like durability mechanics or time sensitivity, which is a shame to me since it drags down a game that does a lot right and isn't afraid to break the mold in some places, even if it can be an acquired taste.

Mines of Titan, despite noticeable inspirations, walks its own path; similar to the first Subterrain you are put in a situation where time seriously works against you. Monsters get stronger and sections of the mine get busier as it passes.
You're in an arms race, which you don't quite realize in your first bit of playtime when you're still squashing rats and little slugs.
Your second or third time in the mine lets it dawn on you though, as you realize your neighbours have grown big and strong and quite unpleasant while you were taking your sweet ass time with all of it. It makes you think twice about what you are setting out to do, rewards you for being efficient with your turns and seduces you to take risks you otherwise wouldn't...

The game knows this. For example, like two of the first quests the colony gives you have you walk into different places and do maintenance on pipes and computers in the safe zone. The average player is going to see this, think "oh a fetch quest" and mindlessly walk where the arrow points them to and then go make a review about how the quests are boring. However, if you are the kind of person that Lives this type of game, you'll think to yourself that you can be smarter about it and just scratch those off the list when you're walking to those places anyways to buy or sell things or do other stuff. This works for half of the objectives and the other half that have you go out your way and meet the people you wouldn't have otherwise talked to, as well as dig through their rooms for copper wire. It's the kind of game that makes me feel like i'm a smart boy when I do things right. Yay.

The story is a good premise but the delivery is heavy-handed. It's kind of heroes journey but hasn't been too predictable up until where i'm at. I'm drawn to the mine and want to see all its levels and the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up ♥♥♥♥ that happens in them.
The characters are somewhat trope-y and archetype-al but still feel like they contain multitudes with quirks, hobbies and fears, hopes. They feel human in short. You can find their outfits in their rooms and they have cute little flavour texts attached to them, which are well written. That's nice.

The side quests you get by meeting the characters are either utilitarian, like one being you having to find spare parts for someone's mining drone to be fixed (You can glean from the dialogue that the character in question seriously cares about the drone after having worked so long with it. There's care given to the presentation.) or kind of... whimsical? Another quest has you deliver someone's poem to their crush. Aw.
At first glance it can be kind of jarring, doing benign stuff like that when time is ticking. However, in my ten hours of playtime 30 days have passed in universe. If you've ever watched something like M*A*S*H you've learned that this kind of small stuff is what keeps people sane in horrible drawn out situations. It just makes sense if you take in consideration that these people have been living in hell for god-knows-how-long.

Though there is an argument to be made about tone. The tone is relatively light everywhere else as well.
I genuinely care about the characters. They're sympathetic, characterized well and their side quests give really good rewards, some permanent upgrades or unique accessories that don't have durability for example. It'd be so easy to break my heart by showing a bit of drama. The game hasn't (yet). I wonder why the decision wasn't made for the overall tone to be a bit more serious, of course the feeling of impending doom is something that is properly conveyed through dialogue and gameplay, but outside of that the story hasn't taken any risks up until the point I have played. No all too sad stuff, no big choices to make with consequences. A little let down, something like that would have put a lot of weight into the story.

The game is very heavy on resource management. It's been balanced well for my playtime, money is short and the game is good at making you think about what you're bringing and what you're using and how. After researching the bigger repair kits i realized that they're really expensive to craft, at 500 credits per 5 uses, which is a big step up from the 60 credits for 3 uses base line kits. Second level repairs 50 and the first level kit repairs 30, with the big difference being that the advanced one only lowers the total durabilty of an item by 10% for each use, with the other one lowering it by 30%.

So what happened is that I sat there throwing numbers over eachother, checking the durability on my gear, how much that costs, if the material costs are a factor or not and how it compares to the credits per use of the kits. Any other game would have made the second repair kit a direct upgrade. I realized that my harvesting tools have around 120ish uses, which is perfect to use the small kits on because losing 30% of that isn't that big of a deal for a bunch of cheaply repaired extra uses, the big repair kit would be a waste, especially seeing that they dont costs all that much to build anyways at one or two hundred credits each. Now my armour on the other hand only has 50ish durability and much more uncommonly loses it. Losing 30% of it would be a big deal since it's like 500ish credits to build for each piece and I would lose more credits replacing it than I save from not using the big kit.
I liked doing that. Made me feel smart. I'm smarter than Titan.

Down in the mines you're also managing the ♥♥♥♥ out of your resources. Now I'm very cautious when it comes to these kind of games, I prepare more than I need and I double check if I have everything. But the thing is, every bandage you use could have had its resources recycled to credits. Even if I haven't had any close shaves as of now- I do remember encounters where I got caught out of cover by a spitter, whose attacks tick up your bleed, poison and nanoinfection counters. What I didn't feel in my health bar, I felt in my wallet. Sure, materials are mostly renewable, but credits take time to get, time that you don't really have. Smart choices are lucrative. The harvestable acid plants spill goop around them when you fail a harvest, unlike the poison plants you can't outrun this AOE. Walking into a room that has a lot of plants to harvest, I check my character sheet, noticing I have some acid buildup from an earlier run-in with titan slugs. Acid is only really dangerous after it hits a certain treshold and unlike nano-infection, it ticks down as turns pass. So I go ahead and spend turns harvesting mushrooms first, which I had to check with a calculator for if they were more profitable to recycle or to sell to the barman Alp, letting my acid gauge tick down to safely harvest the acid plants without running the risk of having to use my neutralizing spray or take the hit to my equipment durability from the acid.

Combat has the expected complexity of a modern roguelike/lite to it. Abilities throw enemies into walls or rush them down. You think about what ability to use. You think a lot in Mines of Titan. It's a thinking mans game. I like it. It makes me feel really smart.

It's a refreshing mix of beautifully balanced mechanics, packed into a good bunch of ideas and furnished with a beautiful atmoshpere and visuals.

In true CA fashion its completely unlike their previous games, well, mostly. So be aware when you buy this.
It's a game largely about resource management, be aware when you buy this.

However, combat in this game doesn't come too short, if you manage your resources right it's a very flowing mix of melee and potshots to thin out clusters of enemies and put spaces between them that allow you to swing your weapon while giving yourself enough room (and stamina!) to dodge.

The infection is a very unique and a very interesting mechanic. Unlike getting weaker when your end is near, you actually spike in power, since the mutations make you a lot stronger or more specialized. I might have had bad luck or might have used too much time in the levels (likely option), but I didn't come across enough antivirals to stave it off.

The weakest part of the game is scavenging, unfortunately. You need to face check locations that look like they might be searchable (which is somewhat easy since most environments are 'barren' for the lack of a better word and anything that looks like its of interest, most of the time also is) and then press 'e' where it lets you. A lot of the times the stuff you find is kind of uninteresting... you get a lot of very few crafting materials and only few of some rare ones, it makes crafting also less interesting - since a lot of the time you dont have to choose between two items, since a lot of the items you cant craft since you havent found the uncommon resource specific to it. It would be more fun if you got fewer, but more varied resources - so you technically can craft everything, but crafting one item would mean you cant craft another instead of, well i guess i'll make all the healing remedies i can.

The strongest point of the game is the feel. Dodging and Attacking flow well, especially ranged into melee and back and the sounds and visuals of this game are a masterwork. Impacts feel crunchy, reloads sound clacky and subtle sounds like a blade cracking under use are very emphasized. This should be expanded on, its ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing.

All in all, if you like roguelites and dont mind some heavier long and short term resource management and just a bit less 'upgrades' kinda stuff then you wont regret buying this game.

minequaf

This game has been one of my favourites for a long time and for a good reason.

It's amazing.

Not a roguelike even though the tags say it is, it's actually a hardcore top-down bullethell fast paced twin stick and mostly roguelite shooter.

The gameplay is exceptional. Movement feels responsive and shooting is satisfying with pleasant sounds, adjustable screenshake and also changeable freezeframes on major hits with big guns, corpses of killed enemies flying around, hitting other enemies.

You'll be playing as one of 12 characters, that all have at least one unique and original passive and active ability, the characters themself have little backstory which is often just explained by a short loading screen message between the levels.

The game gets harder the further you progress into the levels, you'll gain power in form of better guns and mutations. The guns range from revolvers and shotguns, to double miniguns and super plasma cannons, some guns are mostly useless, some are just amazing but almost all of them are viable weaponry on their difficulties.
Mutations are the second form of in game progression, you'll get 10 mutations which are earned by getting levels through collecting rads, that are dropped from enemies. Mutations are largely useful and interesting. They do not give flat bonuses to stats but are more like abilities, for example one mutation allows you to destroy a set number of walls by walking into them, effectively creating a somewhat safe space for cover, another mutation will be unique for every mutant, generally upgrading their active skill.

If it's on sale or you are only remotely interested, get it. You won't regret it. It's one of these indie gems that are surprisingly hidden.