Скорошни рецензии на stardustsunday

If you like Match-3 games and the horror genre, you'll probably enjoy this one. You can choose to play timed or untimed, and there are (I think) 100 levels in total, so it'll take you some time to get through! There is a barebones story - there is an evil in town plaguing everyone, and you work your way through different locations to find and eventually get rid of it. Graphics and music are not bad, and the game has sufficient mechanics and bonus items to keep things interesting as the levels progress. It's not difficult, so perfect for casual gamers who don't want to crack their heads over too much strategising 'n' stuff.

如果你喜欢3消游戏+恐怖题材，我推荐玩这游戏。总共有大概100关，可以选择限时或不限时模式。游戏的故事很简单：小镇有个恶魔，你需要穿梭不同地点去寻找并消灭它。画面和音乐都还不错，游戏机制和奖励物品也够丰富，足以保持趣味。游戏不难，适合不想在策略上耗费太多精力的休闲玩家。

The object of the game is simple: find all 50 hearts in the scene. But the scene has 5 "locked" (i.e. unviewable) areas that can only be accessed by solving each area's related puzzle. The coloured hearts in the scene each give a clue as to how to solve that puzzle.

The difficulty is just right - not too easy so you just spot each heart straightaway, and not too difficult that things get frustrating. Coupled with cute graphics - including ones that animate after each heart is found - and pleasant music, Heartfinder is a must-play if you have about 10-15 minutes to spare and would like to spend that time in a delightful and heartwarming (pardon the pun) way. The puzzles also make you think, so there is a mild degree of challenge involved.

The paid DLC unlocks even more of the game, but you can already get the game's only achievement by completing the free half of it (i.e. by finding all the hearts), and the game can satisfactorily end there.

I strongly recommend this game for both kids and adults alike - it's a wholesome and hearty [/i](couldn't resist, sorry!)[/i] way to spend your time. I'd also like to see more from this developer, especially w.r.t. seasonal and coloured versions of this same genre.

It's free and it's fun. Pleasant music. Takes 5-10 min to get all the achievements (the last achievement requires you to find all the seagulls instead). All animals are easy to find, but not so easy you just keep clicking away.

免费，好玩，音乐不错。5-10分钟就能全成就（最后成就需要找全部的海鸥）。游戏难度还可以。

The look and feel of this will certainly appeal to oldschool adventure gamers of the '80s, with its colour pixel graphics and mode of gameplay, which involves you using/combining objects to solve puzzles. But the game itself kills the fun and exploration for the player, by insisting you always have a burning torch in your inventory, else you die. (You are exploring a cave system so it's presumably pitch-black inside.) You find more torches as you explore more rooms, but they are extremely limited in number, and existing lit torches only last a while before extinguishing, and sometimes without warning. There are a few areas of the game which are already lit and you therefore do not need a torch, but if your flame somehow extinguishes there and you do not have anymore spare torches with you, then you're as good as dead too, because as soon as you leave that area, it will be dark again and you automatically die. Combine this with the fact that your inventory space is limited (so you can only carry several objects at a time), and you will soon see that the primary focus of the game becomes managing your remaining torches and what items you choose to carry with you as you move around.

There is no freedom at all in gameplay in this regard - you are punished for not knowing exactly what to do next or where to go, since you can make no mistakes, as whatever time you waste figuring out stuff means you die, since your torches will start to extinguish one by one and you will eventually run out of them.

What a terrible way to structure a game, especially one which hinges on exploration, adventure, and creative thinking.

Because of this torch limitation, I found myself constantly having to check a walkthrough to figure out exactly what I needed to do next. I had at first tried to play the game without hints, but after >40 playthroughs and still dying due to my torches running out, I gave up.

And that's not all. Not every interactive object in each room lights up when you click on it, so you may sometimes think it cannot be interacted with. Some examples: the secret area behind the waterfall, some hidden doors, indents for inserting objects, etc. It was only when I checked the walkthrough that I discovered, "Ohhh, so I could actually use my item on that thing! Why didn't it light up like all the other interactive elements of the room when I clicked on it then?!"

While I much enjoyed the look and feel of this game and the sense of nostalgia it brought, actually playing it was an exercise in frustration and tedium because of the points I mentioned above. Most likely the only way you'll complete this game is via strictly following a walkthrough. The Uninvited in this same series also suffers from a similar problem in that you have a limited amount of time to complete the game, but even that one was nowhere as constricting and punishing as this one in terms of gameplay.

If you're looking for a really good oldschool adventure game (albeit with an RPG component to it) to sink your teeth into, I recommend checking out Dark Scavenger, which is also here on Steam, instead.

Old-school adventure gamers will like the style and feel of this game, which has colour pixel graphics and barebones sound effects, as well as plenty of easter eggs to discover. But many of the puzzles are not set up very well, and you'll most likely need to refer to a guide on how to solve them. This is coming from someone who's solved many an adventure game (including the original Monkey Island) without hints. Some puzzles just leave you frustrated with how asinine they are (e.g. you have to open a bottle in order to effectively use it on something), while others simply don't make sense (e.g. ferocious, hungry-looking dogs not wanting meat but instead being afraid of lightning?!) On top of all this, the game has a time limit, seriously limiting exploration. You can also die numerous times, simply because you do not have a particular inventory item on you when faced with a puzzle. As for the story, well, we do get bits 'n' pieces here 'n' there of what happened in the mansion you're trapped in, but it still doesn't explain a whole load of stuff that you actually encounter.

Long story short: The game punishes you in ways you shouldn't be, and wastes a lot of time via multiple permadeaths and/or having to redo things simply because you didn't have the right items at the right time.

If you'd still like to experience this game, I'd suggest watching a playthrough instead.

This plays just like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, where you get choices every 1-2 pages or so, and need to select one to move on. This format would have worked fine (Dark Scavenger in particular does it excellently - & I recommend you play that instead of this), except that the game determines your fate solely by luck. Everything is decided by the roll of dice, including your starting stats: stamina (HP), skill, and luck. So if you roll lousy numbers to start with, too bad, but the game is going to be hell for you! Combat is also determined by dice rolls: it doesn't matter if you have full HP, if you keep rolling lower numbers than your enemy, you still end up dead! Items you can buy or acquire to help you are extremely limited in quantity and/or use.

But the game knows this too, and so you can choose between 3 game types: "Adventurer", "Hardcore", or "Free read". In "Free read", you are given an infinite health potion so you essentially can never die during battles, thus preventing the "bad dice roll" issue. However, many other problems abound, such as playing all the way to the end only to DIE still, simply because somewhere along the way you didn't acquire the correct/necessary item(s). This was a problem encountered with those ancient King's Quest games (oldschool '80s Gen-X gamers like myself would know what I'm talking about), that should have long been eradicated as games got more polished through the ages.

For instance, early on, you have to get a certain item from the market that is crucial to your survival. If you do not have it with you, you die no matter what. Later on too, the same thing happens for the ending, except I never figured out how/where to obtain the item needed to win the final battle. There was never ever any indication in the various paths I chose, that that item was necessary, and it wasn't even ever brought up to begin with!

Even if I could live with the pointlessness of the random dice rolls deciding the player's fate, I just think the game goes way too far when it punishes the player for making "wrong" choices when the player has absolutely no indication/clue that that choice is wrong. Like I said, in the various paths I chose (in my more than 40 replays of this game!), never ever did I come across a path that even introduced that crucial item to me, let alone told me how/where to get it. And you are expected to know that you MUST acquire a particular item (or you die!), with no clues ever suggesting this to you.

Which is a huge shame, because I kind of liked the story. (The free one tells of you seeking out an evil pirate called Cinnabar to seek revenge on him for killing your family.)

There are also maybe bugs or ill-thought out instances in the story where some of the choices you have to make involve you deciding whether or not to give someone an item (in return for a favour) - you can make the choice to give the other party the item even if you don't actually have it! (E.g. give rum/food when you don't actually have any on you)

If you really must play a Choose Your Own Adventure game, I highly recommend Dark Scavenger instead. It gets everything right, and the player is never punished for making "wrong" choices, or never expected to miraculously know that they MUST HAVE a certain item otherwise down the road, no matter what they do, they still die... which is a terrible way to structure a game.

It's exactly as advertised in the trailer. The interface is not good (in-game menu buttons are just icons with no text so you have to guess at what they mean), there's no way to see what each hint does again after the initial pop-up tutorial message disappears (I missed it and could never again find out what one of the hints did), the different hint types all seem to do the same thing, and there is no checker to see if your current solution is correct/wrong (like the one that websudoku.com) has. The game will only alert you if you place a cat in a row or square with another of that same cat. The English is also broken in some places (devs use "advices" repeatedly).

But I suppose if you really like cats and sudoku, you can look past these grievances. The draw of the game is really the unlocking of different cats as you solve more puzzles - there are 9 cats to unlock in total, all of which are the real-life versions of their cartoon representations in the game (I must say they did the cartoon versions really well btw!). The cats are all adoptees, which is also really the message of this game: adopt rather than buy. All the cats are of different colours and do look distinctly different enough, so you shouldn't have any issue with identifying them in-game. A bit of spoiler re the cats: I was sad to read that the pure white cat (Thomas) had died back in 2017. It's nice that he's been forever memorialised in this game tho'! The other cats seem to around still - I remember reading that one was born in 2016, which would make it 7 this year.

There is also a section on how to properly introduce new cats to existing cats in your home, which isn't really relevant if you're not a cat owner. This section is solely a guide and not a game.

As for the sudoku puzzles, they are all pretty easy to solve. You start off with 6 x 6 then progress to 9 x 9 boards. The later puzzles tend to require a bit more time to solve, so yes, there is some sort of minimal difficulty progression.

All in all, really only a game for people who love cats AND sudoku! Meow!

This could really have been a fun game - Rorys Restaurant tries to marry the concept of Diner Dash-like time management games with the match-3 format, and it does seem good at first... until you start advancing in level.

The purpose of the game is to serve customers what they ask for before they run out of patience. Dishes are prepared by matching the required number of match-3 ingredients. There is a minimum goal to be met every level, and if you fail to meet that goal, you cannot progress further until you do. There are upgrades in the form of recipes and ingredients, which you buy with coins. Nowhere are you told how on earth you earn these coins, and as a result I always found myself short of them. As you progress, more customer types are added, each with different characteristics (e.g. some have less patience, some must be served first, etc).

The biggest problem with Rorys Restaurant is that you are completely at the mercy of the AI and what matches it gives you. There is no "reset" button so you can't reset the board if you can't find any matches, and neither is there a "reshuffle" button. Instead, you just have to hope that as you clear the board by matching stuff, the AI will drop you the food tiles you need. All this while having to make sufficient matches before customers' patience runs out. What a terrible, terrible idea.

Because of this fatal flaw, you will very often find yourself failing to meet the minimum level goal, and struggling to even pass a level, let alone meet the "expert goal".

It's obvious that no one thought this through or tested this game's playability before rolling it out. Unless they find some way to fix this, this game will remain in my trash heap.

Amanda's pesky little brother has ruined her sticker book & it's now up to you to help her restore it to its original condition so she can enter some competition & hopefully win a prize! That's the premise of this game's story. You then slog your way through countless match-3 boards in order to collect candies, animals, & other objects to allow Amanda to buy upgrades that will help with the restoration process.

Yes, the match-3 puzzles have nothing to do with the story as you can see.

But more importantly, the gameplay just isn't fun. Aside from really boring and unsatisfying match-3 puzzles, the board tiles are difficult to see and jarring to the eye, the obstacles are not challenging but simply irritating and merely there to increase the player's grind (e.g. spiders), and as you progress, nothing really changes except for the fact that the boards get more grindy and annoying.

There are far better match-3 games out there to occupy your time with, so skip this one.

Like many other match-3 games, this one tries to string a story along, but it just ends up being an incoherent mess that jumps from one unrelated sentence to another. You're supposed to be building an airport in 100 days when supposedly a murder happens (or something). Not only is the narrative a jumbled up pile of garbage, it also has got nothing at all to do with the match-3 puzzles you're tasked at solving.

And the match-3 puzzles themselves are pretty terrible too. The AI doesn't let you know if there are no more matches, nor does it reshuffle the board for you, nor is there a manual reshuffle button, so if there are no more matches, you have to figure that out yourself (tho' you can tell after some time, because if you have hints enabled, no more matches will appear), and restart the entire board all over again! There also are by default a fixed number of moves you have to complete each board in (although you can choose to switch off this function if you want to play a more relaxed game), but sometimes the tiles are just not in your favour, so it's entirely luck-dependent on whether you can complete a round within that number of moves. Special/New tiles are not effectively/properly explained, so you're left scratching your head as to what exactly they do, or how exactly they work. A demo of how those tiles worked would have been much better, instead of a useless statement like "the conveyor belt expands boxes around it" (turns out it doesn't "expand" boxes around it, but rather produces more boxes around it after some time).

Finally, the interface also sucks. There are menu/option buttons but with no text, so you have to guess at what the icon on each of them means. For instance, there was a button that looked like a chain of stuff. Pressing that took me back to the main menu and aborted my current progress for the round I was playing! There was no confirmation whatsoever, such as, "Are you sure you want to return to the main menu?" There's no confirmation for basically everything, including the round reset button.

The only good thing I can say about this game is that it has large, plump, easy-to-see tiles that generate a sense of satisfaction when they are removed. Other than that, it's pretty much garbage.