Recent reviews by ApolloXIII_

This game feels underbaked in pretty much every way possible. The art is pretty good, and the characters do a decent job of filling out persona-like archetypes of people, but unlike persona there isn't any serious growth or hidden background to these characters; the furthest the game goes in terms of development is a character apologizing for doing something obviously wrong.
The world is neat I guess, but like everything else in the game, it is as shallow as a puddle. Characters will talk about magic vs technology but the only magic you see in the monster world is combat magic, and like, blue fire? There are off-hand mentions of things that are absolutely insane and wholly unjustified. Humans can't live in the monster world because magic is poisonous (okay...) and also there is no sun (what? where is the heat coming from?? what's the day night cycle??? why would no sun kill someone?).
The shallowness of the world could be forgiven if this was some incredible, emotional story, but the plot is driven by threats which are incredibly nebulous and poorly motivated. Jun is trapped in the monster world and needs to get out before dying (solid), also there are evil monsters who are showing up (okay...) and also she is a fugitive on the run from the police who are desperate to detain a dying, normal-ass human who happened to get stuck because... cops suck? Which like, sure, but it makes it hard to take any drama seriously when our characters are never hurt, Jun walks around talking to everybody with infinite time between missions, and there isn't any semblance of any kind of actual deadline for getting Jun free.
This is all capped off by a deeply insulting "mystery" oriented plot where the apparently smartest character in the group gets her entire personality chopped out to be replaced by trying to figure out the connection between clues so unbelievably obvious an average person could figure out the mystery before even receiving them. Really as a general gripe, all of the characters are incredibly stupid, and not in a particularly funny or interesting way, not to mention the whole game ends on a stupid chosen one twist that feels even more insulting.
The gameplay does not save this at all either. The core combat is a match 3 game where instead of switching adjacent tiles anywhere on the screen, your character runs around swapping tiles while trying to avoid the enemies which are attacking them. This is honestly not a terrible concept, but the execution is deeply lacking. The whole thing feels janky, with poorly readable hit boxes and enemies which seem to do contact damage but actually do attacks which once they lock onto you can hit you from any distance, even if the enemy was only next to you for a brief instant, plus the sin of allowing the player to get stunlocked and constantly slowed down. The way that all of the different rune types do different things leads to horrible stretches of sitting around doing nothing while you swap tiles around waiting for a set of useful ones to pop up, and enemy health pools are large enough that every fight is a slog, either being a nightmare of poor hit feedback leading to deaths or, in the majority of fights, boringly running around and tanking hits because literally who cares, you have infinite healing. The worst part of this is that there is absolutely no growth or building on this core. The first fight you have in the game has the exact same blocks, powers, and effects as the last one in the game. The mechanic of chaining powers together is mostly unimpactful, giving some bonus damage and nothing interesting, and the special abilities you equip from your party are very finicky to activate; the fact that they can whiff completely only adds insult to injury. The enemy types have some variety but really only vary in how annoying they are while you kill them, and the roster rapidly goes stale, with all enemies showing up in every area after they are introduced. The boss fights do the bare minimum of obvious ideas to shake things up, but do not make any of the flawed systems actually fun.
Side quests are boring scavenger "hunts" or character bonding quests which are mostly rehashing existing mechanics. The dungeons are tiny and pretty much linear, with little to no exploration or reward for doing so, and the puzzles run the gamut from incredibly simple to frustrating trial-and-error rooms where you get softlocked constantly with no undo button, and have to restart from the beginning each time you attempt them.
The only way I could recommend this game is if it was on sale and you really really vibe with the art and characters. Otherwise, I cannot recommend this short, shallow, deeply flawed game.
P.S. I finished this game in two hours as you can see from my achievements. idk why the steam stats forgot my playtime/

It's pretty good, and it's pretty short. Leap Year is a competent metroidbrainia with a cute artstyle, and decent if easy puzzles. For most of the puzzles, the solution will fall out of just playing with it for a while, but there were a few real aha moments. The platforming can be a little slippery, occasionally leading to frustration in executing solutions, but I never really got mad at the game. The secrets are well-done, although they tended to feel more like "oh, neat" than the "yo holy wtf" of its contemporaries. It doesn't have the narrative or emotion of Outer WIlds, or the depth and intricacy of Animal Well, but it's still a solid example of a budding genre, and I feel like I got my money's worth.
If 1-2 hours of solid metroidbrainia for five bucks sounds like a good deal to you, then go for it.

This DLC is incredibly small, and felt mostly like a waste of time. It's a little bit more of the same kind of things as the main game with mostly the same issues. There are 2 new upgrades not tied to DLC progression, one which is useful but uninteresting, and the other which should have been a base feature of the game without needing an upgrade (I hate useless stamina bars so much it's unreal). There are 3 new enemy types, only one of which is fun or interesting to fight, and one of which is one of the worst mini-boss designs I've seen in a game. The jetpacking is tied to environmental stuff, and is both slow and clunky. The story is also pretty weak, the villain is not funny, and if I hadn't been actively putting off story stuff in search of collectibles and upgrades, I could've finished the story portion of the DLC in under 30 minutes. The underwater "gameplay" feels like a bad joke. The new environments are the best part of the DLC, but they aren't particularly special, and lack the little secrets and side areas that made the main game environments interesting to explore.

Overall, I wasted the 3 dollars I spent on this, and recommend that you don't do the same.

This game is alright. It's fine. It's a pretty basic fps metroidvania, although quite linear for a metroidvania, consisting not of a large map of interconnected zones but a few fully distinct areas with a few large zones each. The game has a lot of missteps and little irritations, like how certain gates or blocks require items that are both useful in combat and you have an extremely limited inventory of, which means that even if you have the upgrades and progression to get into a secret, if you happen not to have the key items you need to get in when you find it, you need to remember where it is in a game with no map, backtrack to an area with the resource you needed, grab the resource, then go back to the secret. It's highly irritating.
Enemy variety is middling to weak, weapon variety is nil (a pistol with an unlockable charge shot I barely used) and the bosses are all extremely mediocre. At least environment variety is pretty high. The areas are all pretty consistently interesting, unique, and/or pretty.
The upgrades you get are mostly meaningful, and the way that the grappling hook is implemented is great, especially if you figure out how to launch yourself with grapple cancelling. It does bug me that the high jump needs a basically post-game upgrade to actually be fun to use, but I digress.

This is a game with a lot of flaws, but a combination of good art, occasionally funny writing, and good core movement (at least once you have all the upgrades) was compelling enough to get me through getting all of the collectibles even once I'd beaten the final boss, as well as through the DLC. If I had bought this at full price, this review would almost certainly be negative, but on a deep discount, I'd say this game is worth trying if it looks interesting to you.

This game feels almost like an asset flip, quantity over quality at every step. The movement is janky, the visuals are simultaneously minimalist and overbaked, all of the individual elements are mediocre in their implementation and don't build anything past the sum of their parts. The level design is asinine, with "puzzles" more about figuring out where the objectives actually are than about any kind of creative problem-solving, and the obstacle course nature of the levels is more frustrating than fun with the slow, janky movement system. There is no flow, no sense of speed, and no tech or tricks worth doing.

Sure, the game is cheap, and with 40 levels and a bunch of game modes, it has the content necessary to justify its price, but even if I got this for free I would have felt like my time was wasted.

Pretty short, pretty fun, definitely worth checking out given that it's free, but beware, this game has a lot of jank. A lot of the game is built around interacting with and doing platforming on top of physics objects, and that pushes an already shaky core movement pretty far, although it's not the worst aspect in terms of jank. The worst part is the way wallrunning works, or rather tends not to work on curved surfaces, with you sometimes getting teleported along walls in strange and unpredictable ways instead of running along them. There are also some puzzle elements, but they mostly aren't bothersome except for a part of Dam - Secondary involving heavy objects and see-saws, and the fact that you have to jump just before the object hits the see-saw in order to get launched properly, but if you jump a little too early or late, you won't get launched at all. However, if you find yourself getting too frustrated or if something is broken, the game lets you skip to the next section.

Overall, very janky, but short, and sweet, and full of cool little concepts and ideas. It's free and it's tiny, so it's worth a play if you're interested in first-person platformers.

This is one of the best first person platformer/parkour games in the genre, with gameplay second only to Neon White, in my opinion. The presentation is minimalist and uninspiring, and the total number of gameplay elements is quite small, but that just makes the depth available even more impressive.
The movement system has a lot of specific nuances and idiosyncracies (like the lack of air control, the fact that you keep your speed when jumping off of walls, or crouch jumping) which you need to figure out and understand on your own, since the game doesn't teach you them very well, however each piece is deliberate and carefully considered to create a tight and expressive movement system with a great sense of speed and flow. The skill ceiling in this game is incredibly high, and you are expected to master this movement system, step by tiny step.
The level design is top-notch, levels will usually have many viable routes, and figuring out the best way through each one is very satisfying, as they often have tricks and skips you don't notice on your first run through. Being able to race against player ghosts is great for this, when you are struggling and need confirmation on what the perfect line actually is.
There's a map editor with steam workshop support and multiplayer, but the multiplayer, while still functional is absolutely dead, and I can't vouch for the quality of most community maps. Even without the extra content, I think the game is absolutely worth the price, and if it's on sale, even better.

This is a very hard game. You might look at the Steam page, see that it has 25 levels, and think "that's not a lot of content" but you can look at the 70 hours I have on record, and know that that is all only for getting all gold medals (which isn't even the highest tier), and all spheres (secondary collectables hidden around on each level). The level of precision and consistency which is asked of you, sometimes just for finishing a level cleanly, let alone getting a gold or platinum time, is often at the level of difficulty I would expect from hidden/post-game completionist content in any other speedrunning game (green medals in Trackmania, red medals in Neon White), especially as you push into the last 10 levels. This is not inherently a problem, if you're willing to bash your head against the levels and develop a proper mastery, but this is not really a game where you can muddle through with slow times and a mediocre understanding of the mechanics and still have a good time. Most of the content here is at a level where you need to really master it to engage with it properly, and if you aren't willing to make that commitment, you probably are either going to get really frustrated, or just not make it through the whole game.
I can tell you that I made the commitment, and I found it incredibly worthwhile, but you have to figure out your own threshold for acceptable difficulty.

Overall, this is an excellent game, heavily following in the footsteps of Half-Life 2 and managing to look favorable in the comparison despite its flaws. The game is split into two parts, both of which share the same base mechanics, but with wildly different structures. Campaign is a linear shooter campaign, where you follow a single narrative thread and move from level to level and set piece to set piece, channeling heavy Half-Life and some Halo influences. Zone Patrol is an open exploration mode channeling more Stalker where you move back and forth between a number of interconnected levels, uncovering secrets, piecing together lore, and solving light puzzles in between dealing with dynamically spawning enemies.

The campaign is very good, with little to criticize beyond nitpicks explainable by the solo-dev nature of the game. The story is great, although the lack of voice acting for story characters absolutely hurts the quality of the presentation, especially given the comparison to Half-Life. The encounters are mostly well-designed and the locations manage to be beautiful, with a great sense of scale despite the low-poly art style. Enemy variety is high, weapon variety is also high (maybe a little too high), and the pacing is pretty rock-solid.

Zone Patrol is more of a mixed bag, even though I love it. While the campaign is good, it's not incredibly innovative, Zone Patrol is really unique, and still fun despite its occasional missteps. The levels are mostly great, although it can take some time to be able to navigate some of the interior areas without getting hopelessly lost, and there's location variety without losing the cohesive sense of these places being part of a single area. The way enemies spawn in and fight each other separate from the player is really cool and gives a sense of the zone being a living breathing place separate from the player, but that illusion gets kind of broken when enemies mostly don't start spawning until after you enter a level, so you get a few minutes of being totally alone before enemies start populating the place. The horror elements were surprisingly well done. There was a little in the campaign but zone patrol leans into horror a lot harder and it manages to be properly spooky initially without becoming irritating as you get used to it. The lore is cool, and fits in well with the campaign while still being deep and separate in its own right. The writing in general is solid. My largest gripe is with the secret uncovering and puzzles. When I came into Zone Patrol and started looking at terminals and stuff, I was kind of expecting some Outer Wilds style knowledge puzzles, finding patterns in clues and figuring out how the zone works to piece together ways to get into new areas and find new equipment, or maybe more schizo-y pull out a pen and paper and combine clues from across the zone type puzzles. Instead, too often the puzzles boiled down to finding codes for doors, and often, the code was just written down in a hard to notice way somewhere nearby. Similarly, far too much is locked behind happening to notice small, unhighlighted objects sitting in dark areas surrounded by other desk-clutter. Too many times had I solved a puzzle or gotten to the place I needed to be, left thinking I needed to look somewhere else, and had to go back because something I didn't happen to notice was sitting right there for me to pick up. None of this was a dealbreaker for me at all, though, and I still really enjoyed my time in Zone Patrol.

This game is not perfect, but it's really good, worth the money, and absolutely should be an inspiration to more indie and solo devs for what is possible and what the standards of quality should be for fps games in general. In the same way Dusk and Doom 2016 paved the way for a slew of 90s style boomer shooters, I hope this and games like it will inspire more Half-Life 2-likes, each with their own innovations and style.

Very good schizoidvania, emphasis on puzzle solving and secret hunting over raw mechanical skill, with plenty of new tools you can discover, both in terms of items and special techniques.
The art is beautiful, and the map just keeps filling in more and more and way more than you expect, so plenty of rewards for exploration and keen observation, as well as remembering things you've seen to go back to later.
The tools you discover are pretty non-standard compared to most metroidvanias, but that allows for a lot more expressiveness as you discover the full potential of each item you find, even the ones which initially seem kind of pointless.
The postgame and true ending is kind of a slog to get to in terms of combing and recombing the map to find the last few secrets (I got to 54 eggs before caving and looking up a guide), but you should definitely keep playing after you roll credits for the first time. This game is as deep as its namesake.

The puzzles are largely great, though if you've played the first one (which I'd recommend) then that's to be expected. Only got stuck a few times but never really felt like I was doing filler except for the Prometheus monuments. New puzzle mechanics are added super regularly and explored fairly thoroughly. By the end the devs have a lot of toys to play with but are able to restrain themselves to only a few carefully selected elements per puzzle, keeping things focused without losing on variety.
The thing that pleasantly surprised me was the writing. I liked the writing in Talos 1 but the sequel turns it up a lot. I enjoyed the writing's ability to be thought-provoking, heartfelt, and funny without any tonal inconsistency, and I consistently exhausted dialog trees and sought out the voice logs and reading material, all of which kept to the same high bar. The story overall might not necessarily be to your taste, but I liked it and thought it was executed well.
The presentation in general is also great. I was playing at fairly low settings, which lead to quite a few visual artifacts, but the force of the art direction blew me away regardless. The music was solid too. Polish-wise I ran into a fair few bugs and occasional performance issues when loading areas, but nothing game breaking and they didn't affect my experience much overall.

This is a very good game. If you like puzzles, your PC can run it, and especially if it's on sale, I would say it's a must-buy.