Recent reviews by 100% Hippo

Ale & Tale Tavern is a fun tavern management game that works solo, but really shines in co-op. The core gameplay loop is preparing food and drink from gathered ingredients and serving it to NPCs. There's short quests and delivery orders to promote exploration and keep things interesting, and combat with mobs around the map. The quests are fully voice acted, though while the voice acting and writing is passable, you can tell it was done by a small team.

The core loop of serving foods in the tavern is really polished and works really well. You can open or close your tavern at any time, and you choose how many tables to have, so you have a lot of control over how hectic or calm you want it to be. We had a great time rushing around with friends preparing food, brewing extra kegs, and delivering it - juggling all the orders as they came in. We were able to unlock all the recipes and achievements after around 10 hours, though there was room for a few more hours if we really wanted to push how large we could scale your tavern. Definitely recommend if you have a few friends to hop in with.

Satisfactory is a phenomenal factory-building game. The world is immersive and fun to explore, and there's a great sense of progression throughout the game. But even with those, the highlight of the game is the factory building. All machines can be deconstructed without loss of materials, so you can just build things without worry. The game gives you all the tools you need to build a beautiful and organized factory, or you can just clip conveyers through floors and trains through terrain to get something working. Things in general just work, and the machines that require extra attention (fluid piping and machines with waste products) are intentionally placed through the progression to keep the game fresh and interesting. I played through the game in multiplayer and everything worked smoothly. The only issue we ran into was that achievement progress was not shared for a small number of achievements, though this is minor and has been improved somewhat in the updates since launch. Our playthrough was completed right at the 100 hour mark, and there's definitely room for hundreds of additional hours after the main story if you enjoy sandbox factory building. I know I will almost certainly play through the game again, either with more friends or just to start over without the inefficiencies I introduced the first time. Highly recommend this game, either single- or multiplayer, I had a blast.

Don't let the 2D nature of the game deceive you - Terraria is a survival game with surprisingly deep exploration and progression. There's a shocking amount of bosses and gear to go after, and the world changes as you progress to keep things challenging and interesting. The multiplayer works well, and the game is fun both solo and with friends. tModLoader makes it easy to run mods to add even more content once you've exhausted all the base content, and there's an enormous catalog of mods available. All around an insane deal for the price.

Outer Wilds impressed me most by presenting the player with the satisfying opportunity to discover the secrets of its worlds. Echoes of the Eye successfully prepares a lot of new discoveries even once you're fully familiar with the base game, and that's all I really would have wanted from a DLC. The DLC content leans more into the unnerving atmosphere that was occasionally present in the base game, though like the base game the horror elements are mainly atmospheric. Also like the base game, Echoes of the Eye is best played blind, leaving the secrets for yourself to discover. The DLC feels like a natural progression of the base game - if you enjoyed Outer Wilds you'll enjoy this too.

Outer Wilds is a phenomenal game about discovering the secrets of a small solar system. The planets are all hand crafted and dense with things to explore. The game keeps notes of important things for you, which helps keep track of where there's still hidden secrets. It is easily a contender for the best game I've ever played, and I would strongly recommend going into it blind as the entire game is about discovering things for yourself.

If you enjoyed the base game, you'll enjoy this as well. There's a single new city, but it and the area around it are dense with manually placed structures and POIs. It feels possible to explore the area around the city to a degree that isn't really possible anywhere else in the game. The main story wasn't the best chain in the game, but it was good. Where I think the narrative really shined was in the side quests, several of which really impressed me. The main story was ~10 hours of content, so with side content the DLC is around 15-20 hours total. At $30 I'd again recommend it if you enjoyed the base game, and if you thought the base game was alright I'd wait for a sale but still give it a try.

For $5 more than the DLC alone, this provides the Shattered Space DLC, the soundtrack and art book, a spacesuit skin, and $10 of creation credits (enough for 1 tracker's alliance mission or a mix of a few housing decorations). I'm not sure that the skin or the credits are enough to justify this over just the DLC, but if you're planning on buying the DLC and the soundtrack, this bundle provides both at a ~13% discount.

A small but very polished game of small toy mazes. Lots of fun ideas, and the ~45 minute length suits the concept well as you're constantly exploring new ideas.

CrossCode is a phenomenal action RPG set in a fake MMO. The story and dialogue are very engaging, and the characters all have a lot of personality - while I think all aspects of the game are great, the characters and writing are the most memorable and unique. The combat is fluid and satisfying, and the boss fights felt well balanced. The one aspect that may not be for everyone is that the dungeons have a lot of puzzle elements, though I really enjoyed them. The dungeons are expansive, some taking multiple hours to complete. The game is one I imagine I'll never forget, and I'd highly recommend it.

A New Home provides more of everything in the base game - exactly what you'd hope for in a DLC. A new area, a new dungeon with interesting mechanics, and interesting new story chapters. It ties up a few narrative loose ends from the base game, and features lots of character interaction which was a highlight. Around 10 hours of extra content for the game, which if you've enjoyed the game is well worth it.