Recent reviews by Ashe

Extremely competent showing for an early access title, with a slew of environments that turn the Half-Life-inspired science facility into a surprisingly varied assortment of exploration options. With a touch of SCP-like writing, Abiotic Factor creates an environment that is both comical and concerning, as balancing needs with the desire to explore creates combat with myriad enemies and the dwindling resources available in each location. That's not to say that the game can't be played slow and weeks in-game taken at one base if you're willing to put in the effort scrounging every last scrap, but it's definitely a game that works best in a group and only stopping for a few days to build up a rudimentary forward operating post at each new zone, whilst having one main storage area somewhere central that can be moved forward when major events in the story happen. Overall a fantastic first impression, and I'm eager to see where the devs take it going forward!

Game is absolutely fantastic, marred by the sheer number of players hammering the servers and causing instability. The devs couldn't have possibly expected their original game with a peak of only a few thousand to suddenly balloon into a sequel with half a million people trying to play at all hours of the day. Everything I've played has been extremely well-done, and most major glitches have been due to server instability, which will almost certainly be handled with time and as the playerbase declines to more managable levels.

An excellent deckbuilder that bears similarities in structure to Slay the Spire at first, but reveals itself to be far more than initially presented once more mechanics start coming into play. Best experienced without any knowledge of the game so the gameplay twists and meta-narrative can present themselves to powerful effect.

Short review because 2020 steam awards. Fantastic asymmetrical gameplay with a lot of nuance to the different playstyles that can be had on both survivor and killer side thanks to the wide variety of maps, perks, and powers. Low entry level but fairly high skill ceiling.

I thought I already posted a review for this but hey it's Space Ninjas and I really just want the badge for the 2019 steam awards thing :V

Largely the same as the original Dota 2 Auto Chess, the improvements to be found in Underlords make it a far easier game to get into and a much snappier experience. Strategies are mostly the same at the moment, but mechanics have been refined down to give everyone more of a fighting chance while avoiding (outside of extreme luck) the ability for one player to pull away and win a perfect game as happened often in the original mod. A far smaller filesize to have Underlords installed instead of the entirety of Dota 2 caps things off nicely.

Play it for the escape rooms, not for well-written plot. Also play it to finish the trilogy, don't touch this unless you've played through "9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors" and "Virtue's Last Reward" first, as there's massive spoilers for both involved here. Unlike 999 and VLR which avoided paradoxical logic until the very end, ZTD fully embraces the bootstrap paradox and uses it multiple times throughout the game to explain major elements of the plot and even to solve a puzzle or two.

Aside from an annoying habit to explain parts of the plot away with bootstrap paradoxes, overall both 999 and VLR are mostly-enjoyable puzzlers with some great characterization throughout.

Who's ready for another round of "Guys our insanely profitable money-making machine isn't making us enough money"? The game's not even out of Early Access and already they're slapping microtransactions on it. Do not buy.

Spacebase DF-9 looked quite interesting, from the Dwarf Fortress-esque room management to the quirky characters and random event system. Unfortunately, it hasn't had a significant content upgrade since I initially saw it months ago on an Evening with Sips episode or short series. What is in this game is a wide gamut of bugs combined with sheer stupidity when it comes to the AI, arguably the most important part of the game, and they screwed it up.

Not being able to build rooms, place objects, or cancel construction orders without having to move the camera around until the game sees fit to finally let your commands go through was the most common bug, and it persisted in being terrible from the moment I tried to start building a base to my eventual giving up on the game. Random events seem to pull from a pool of maybe 5 different things, the most frequent of which was a ship encounter that featured a squeal along the lines of "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! WE FINALLY FOUND YOU!!!!!!!! WE'RE COMING ABOARD THIS INSTANT!" to which no matter whether you select to allow them on or not, you are forced to take on additional crew members, all of which will be more of a liability than a help due to their universally crap skills. This will culminate in your base having to constantly expand its oxygen suppliers and eventually even building a second reactor, just to provide for these new idiots while avoiding losing your valuable crew members to oxygen deprivation as the wastes of space use it all up.

Oh, and if you want to expand your oxygen room to make space for more recyclers, or any room in fact, make sure you set the entire station to become builders. Because when you have four builders dismantle a wall, immediately head back into the base to go to sleep, and refuse to build the floor in place of the wall you just tore down, your entire base will asphyxiate and your builders will sleep themselves to death, dooming the entire station. Absolute rubbish prioritizing and programming.

Do not buy this game. Do not buy Early Access games. Early Access games are a plague on Steam and should not be allowed a store page or a sale until they have a finished product.