stardustsunday の最近のレビュー

Which is fine, because this is free.

A woman revisits her hometown and nostalgia ensues.

This is a very short visual novel that tries to incorporate interactive elements by enabling you to "control" things like walking and a few other minor actions. There are no real choices and you must perform the intended actions or the game will not proceed.

The illustration was colourful and pleasant throughout; the animation a bit clunky.

The story did manage to convey what it intended to, albeit in a slightly "blah" way.

On the whole this was a commendable effort with good enough production values. But it needs far more polish and thought, especially where game mechanics are concerned, in order to cross the gap between a cute little free short, and a mind-blowing indie gem that people will remember for years to come.

What would you do if you had 60 seconds left to live before a meteor destroyed everything? Find out in this free game! 9 different endings are currently available, but I can think of so many more...
The only thing lacking right now is achievements - one for every different ending you manage to unlock.
This is definitely a developer to keep your eye on!



剩下60秒时间活，你会做什么？玩这游戏就知道。总共有9个不同结局，都做得不错，有趣又好笑。游戏是免费的+有汉化，高度推荐玩一玩。希望开发者再做其他类似游戏和添加成就。

Move around, shoot enemy planes, avoid rockets (rockets can be shot too) to get all the achievements. The game is free, so why not?

No. Because enemy planes and rockets spawn at random and sometimes they appear too close to you and cannot be avoided no matter what you do.

射飞机，避导弹就行了。除了成就之外没有其他可取之处。

This describes the entire game. The story, the puzzles, the HO scenes. And I encountered a few bugs/programming issues too.

Story
The plot was one of the densest, most illogical pieces of amateur fiction I've ever come across; and given that I'm already taking into consideration the fact that HOGs usually have some of the worst "stories" ever, this isn't saying much. Characters behave like morons, the plot isn't very clear (and because of that, so is the killer's motive), and the character you control (i.e. the detective investigating the case) acts in the most senseless ways imaginable.

Puzzles
Like for kindergarteners babies. Maybe even your pet iguana could solve them. The bulk of them were so easy I couldn't see any point to even having the puzzle at all, and most of them were either completely senseless or else unrelated to the game. The ones in the later part of the game (near the ending) in particular, were extremely poorly done and had very bad instructions, as if they were rushing to put out the game and QC flew out the window as a result. There's a component whereby you need to piece together clues to figure out what happened in the crime scene; this very often involved total guesswork from beginning to end (unless you used the pattern on the tiles to help you), and some of the sequences didn't even make sense. When I say "don't make sense", I mean things like why would Person A attack Person B using a lesser weapon, when Person A already had the ultimate murder weapon in his hands?

HO scenes
There are very few of them (thankfully). Some involve finding objects on a list, while others involve finding object fragments. The FRO scenes were generally speaking ok, but the HO scenes involved some poor object-labelling, and were, aside from that, way too easy. You can choose to play mahjong instead of looking for the items.

Bugs / Issues
I can't remember all of them, but one happens when you're in the hotel lobby area in the ground floor. Susan and Peter have left, but you can still "talk" to Susan - in the spot where she was sitting before (even though there's no one there now). The "talk" icon will still appear if you move your mouse there, and if you click on it, her voice will still say the last thing she did when she was still in the room. There's also a huge issue with expired captions in this game. For e.g., let's say you've already completed an action/scene, but when you go back to that scene later on and click on objects again, those objects still show the captions from before you completed the associated actions. Not only does this reflect extremely lazy/poor programming ♥♥♥ foresight, it also confuses the player, because you sometimes wonder if the action got performed successfully the previous time.

This game may decrease your intelligence. The only thing decent is the voice acting; but draping a diamond-studded cape over a pile of poo won't change the essence of what it is.

Button Tales gets many things right: attractive graphics, nice music, a clear sense of progression, levels that require thinking and some form of strategy, increasing difficulty, and achievements to reward you along the way.

The game differs from other match-3 games in that you can also flip pieces to form matches. You can flip pieces as many times as you like, but flips are random, meaning that you won't know what a piece will flip into, until you flip it. It doesn't mean that one kind of piece will always flip to become another kind of piece. This actually makes things more fun. You can also set up matches quite easily using flips, including long chains. There are several different kinds of power-ups to help you, and matching long chains gives you various types of bombs that you can also use to help solve the board. There are also some no-match tiles (e.g. coins, bombs) that you can use to swap positions with other tiles to help form matches, or move pieces to where you want them to be.

There's a sort of barebones "story" that unfolds as you advance. Nothing was explained, but at least the animation and voiceover were cute and of a high standard, though it did stutter on my computer. Not sure if this was due to my own hardware issues or the game's poor memory optimisation. But the puzzles themselves played fine with no memory issues at all.

In total there are 100 levels, with 9 (I think?) bonus levels. The bonus levels are only playable if you unlock every single achievement in the game. It was easy to get all the achievements, including the one that required setting up long chains. I won't spoil how to get it, but once you understand the best way to set up long matches, it's a cinch.

Every level requires some form of quick thinking before you start playing the board. Some levels can only be played a certain way, so until you figure out what way that is, you can't possibly pass. Every level has a fixed number of moves you have to complete it within; if you fail to do so you have to restart. If you're careful and devise your strategy properly before jumping into things, you can usually complete the level with tons more moves to spare, easily earning you 3 stars.

Button Tales is a great game for both kids and adults alike. Those who like their match-3 games to come with a bit of simple strategising and puzzle-solving will absolutely love it.

Verdict: ★★★★★ 5/5 stars

Absolutely no challenge - just traverse a maze, pick up all the eggs, then head for the exit. No strategy involved, and all levels are the same, except that you just get a bigger maze that takes more time to travel through. It's extremely repetitive and there's no need to think at all because you can easily see where the paths lead, and most paths will lead to an egg which you need to collect anyway. The only plus point I can think of is easy achievements (~within 1 hr to 100%).

根本半点挑战性都没有，每关的迷宫只是越来越大罢了。唯一的优点是成就容易拿，~1小时内能完成整个游戏。

Teetering on the edge of completely unplayable due to some of the worst HO scenes I've ever come across. Tons of objects completely or partially hidden in shadows (and only found via the hint button, because there was no way you could tell what they were, or that they were even there), many mislabelled items (e.g. compass rose named as "compass", tassel spelled as "tessel", etc), lots of weirdly named or obscure things ("one love spoon" and "door stop rope", anyone?), and numerous unregistered mouseclicks - I had to click on many items at least twice before the game "accepted" my click and considered the object found. The story was poorly introduced and robotically narrated in a series of cheapo-looking animations that were all abruptly cut off. I can't think of a single reason why you should play this, except unless you're really desperate and need some kind of HO fix.

★☆☆☆☆ (1 out of 5 stars - that 1 star is for the effort they made in at least trying to think up a story)

This is quite blatantly achievement spam and also supposedly an asset flip, so I feel guilty for finding this fun. But the bottomline is, the concept is simple but smart - stack blocks till your growing inaccuracy eventually causes you to miss completely. Achievements have nothing to do with your score or the actual game, and drop by idling in the main menu. Since there are no real goals to be met, this is at the end of the day, just another time killer to help one forget that one's husband is dying of Stage 3B cancer.

A match-3 game with a "story" that comprises you moving through 5 chapters. Each chapter has ~10+ levels and a timed "boss" whom you beat by matching non-candy tiles directly above it (so that they fall on top of the creature and hit it) as it moves across the screen.

Cons

✖ Tiles are jarring-looking and hurt the eyes
✖ Objects are too similar-looking, making it hard to find matches
✖ After the first few levels, all other levels are exactly the same
✖ Exact same gameplay strategy throughout the entire game
✖ No thinking involved
✖ Voiceover is automated - yes, they actually used a terrible-sounding text-to-speech bot instead of a real person to narrate the entire story
✖ You will run out of moves frustratingly often
✖ It takes up to 10 seconds for the AI to realise there are no more moves and reshuffle the board
✖ The "story" is completely unrelated to the gameplay and therefore totally negligible

Pros

✔ Music mildly acceptable
✔ Kid-friendly


No new game mechanics are introduced after the first few levels in the game. The only things you ever have to deal with are "spiders" and locked tiles. That's it. Gameplay strategy remains the same throughout the entire game - make enough matches to get bonuses (there are 3: remove 1 single tile, remove 4 tiles, remove all tiles of the same symbol), and use those bonuses to help you get rid of stubborn tiles. No effort whatsoever went into the making of this game, which is reflected by the developers' refusal to even get a human narrator to recite the story.

They're all accurate.

Still, I thought I'd give this a try because y'know, free achievements - all 21 of 'em.

I didn't manage to get past unlocking 2.


On top of there being no way to speed up the text, which slooooowly prints out word by word, there is also no auto function, which means you have to click like crazy. And god forbid you try to actually read the damn story, because the English is so completely broken, the content so mindnumbingly boring, and the protagonist (a man named Michael whom you're supposed to be) so thoroughly off-putting, that you wonder how it's possible anyone even thought this product was acceptable for public consumption - even if free.

P.S. I took a look at this developer's other stuff on Steam and it's even more appalling, especially considering the fact that you're paying for them!