Recent reviews by AlienTree

yeah. this one hurts

this is the best monster hunter has ever been

maybe one of the best DLCs ever released for any game. truly an unbelievable accomplishment.

not sure how i've never given factorio the thumbs up before. genuinely the singular master class in immaculate game design. hard to run out of positive things to say about the game, and all of the free 2.0 updates breathe new life the game hardly needed. this will remain one of the games of the century, no matter what happens in the next 76 years.

they've done it again

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edit: unfortunately, every update has removed the things i like and added things i don't. i respect supergiant's need to listen to community feedback to ensure sales, but i'll still mourn what this game could have been.

While Viewfinder is visually and mechanically very impressive, it offers absolutely no substance. The puzzle designs are insultingly simple, hardly offering more than the most surface level introduction to a mechanic, and the writing is frankly bad. The voice actors do a good job of delivering a believable performance, but the script is so vapid, and the overarching narrative so flat and empty, that I would honestly rather the game have no story at all than what it offers. Even with these faults, I would often finish a fun mechanical sandbox, but in less than an hour and a half I've already made it through more than half of the game, and in that half been offered nothing that kept me interested, so I'm instead choosing to request a refund and save myself both the money and time.

This truly feels like a game that suffered from too much direction by programmers. From its overall feeling of a glorified tech demo to its self-congratulatory story elements about the beauty of majestic code, it feels impossible to take this game more seriously than an unnecessary expansion of the promotional footage that spawned it. Real puzzle design and writing could have made this concept into an incredible game, but instead it's landed as one of my biggest disappointments of the year.

For a simple concept, the scenarios and difficulties provide just enough variety to keep Slipways consistently engaging. The 25 year limit for each run is well balanced to give you just enough time to achieve the cooler options the game has available while still restricting you enough to force interesting decisions. For $17, this game feels well worth its asking price, and I expect to continue doing runs for some time to come.

The last playtest I participated in, they squeezed an unfinished pet project champ concept into the build at the last minute, ruining the whole weekend of testing.

This game has made no progress in the 2 years I've been watching and testing it, and I have no reason to believe it will manage to make progress in the years to come either. Save yourself the time and hope.

This steam release is everything anyone could have asked for. It makes one of the best and most complex games ever made the most approachable it's ever been.

This game is cited as the inspiration for dozens of games released since its inception, and it is for good reason. If learning to help a troupe of dwarves overcome hilariously detailed challenges appeals to you at all, treat yourself to this masterpiece.

This game is something I didn't know I'd been waiting for. Truest follow up to my Left 4 Dead addiction in the decade since.