Recent reviews by ETSD

Luck be a Landlord brings roguelike gameplay to a slot machine. I would never have thought of this combination, nor would I have expected it to work so well. I still haven't made it to the top level, but know thanks to the great gameplay and plethora of achievements, I know this one is going to get played for years to come.

Simply the best solitaire game on the market

I thought I hated auto battlers. Then someone combined auto battling with deck construction, city building, resource managing, crafting, and rougelite mechanics. Very much enjoy this experience, and the replayability it provides.

My first PC game was Epic Pinball back in 1993. This is everything I loved about a digital pinball table over 25 years ago with a ton of new features that the last 25 years have made possible. If you like pinball at all, buy this game!

I have around 100 hours in this game on my Nintendo Switch. This game is challenging, but well worth the effort to get good at it. I remember playing Ice Cold Beer when I was a kid, and it is absolutely genius to turn it into a roguelike. If the trailer piques your interest at all you will absolutely love this game.

This is one of my all time favorite games. It seems like a simple platformer on the surface, but every step takes you closer to revealing the truth of what is really going on. I can't say anymore without spoiling it, but I can recommend this game completely.

I saw this game a PAX West and instantly knew I needed it. I love "action roguelikes", and this is a great entry to the genre. The game may look like a simple platformer with guns, but it is far more than that. Every time you play, the levels you play through are generated procedurally. This means every time you will face a different arrangement of enemies in a different arrangement of rooms. On top of this, as you play more, you will unlock new heads, new guns, and new activated items. Each of these will change they way your character behaves. This helps you to approach playing the game differently, which ultimately helps you get better at the game itself. You will die a lot, but the more you play the more you will learn how to die less, and eventually you'll make it to the end. But thanks to the level generation and character customization, beating the game is never the end.

Binding of Isaac was the perfect game. Then they went and improved on perfection.

This game steals a lot of concepts from the roguelike genre of games that have been becoming more and more popular with the general gaming community. First and foremost this game includes permadeath. This means when you die the game is over. But it's not as bad as it sounds because of the second concept, procedural generation. Each time you play the game is a unique experience.

Not scared off yet? Great! This games utilizes the dungeon structure from the Legend of Zelda series of games, but takes out the tedious overworld. Each level presents you with opportunities to collect an itme or two that will alter your character in meaningful ways. The controls mimic those of Smash TV, meaning you will control your movement with one joystick, or the WASD keys, and your attack with tthe other joystick, or the arrow keys. The engine has been tuned to make this control scheme feel tight and responsive. When you die, you will know exactly why. This is important because when you die you will learn from it, and in time you will find yoursel getting farther and farther.

The game starts out as a small section of what it will eventually become. As you progress, the game will become longer, harder, and more complex. As you prove that you are ready for more, the game gives you new challenges, but, you will feel that you are ready for them. Even as the game grows, the play length does not.

The theming of the game may turn you off. It deals a lot with religion, child abuse, mental illness, and other traditionally touchy subjects. If you can deal with this, and the other aspects of this game sound appealing at all, I can't recommend that you check out this game enough. $15 sound too high for a game that you want to try? As I stated in the beginning, this game is actually an improvement on Binding of Isaac. That game costs $5, but is usually on sale when Steam has its large sales. It is worth checking out if you want to play this game but don't want to spend $15.

But if this game is a remake, what did they change? A lot. The graphics were completely overhauled. The game engine was tightened up. The bugs were all fixed. The items were reworked where necessary. The synergies between items were tested thoroughly. New items were added. New enemies were added. New bosses were added. The engine was rewritten to makes it playable on basically all computers and laptops. Every facet of this game was reworked to be an improvement.

This game is my highest recommended game on Steam.

One of the best platformers to date. Vini Vidi Vici!

The Binding of Isaac is the latest offering from one of the greatest Indie Developers out there, Edmund McMillen, and it does not disapoint. This "RogueLikeLike" is a perfect blend of the Zelda dungeon structure, random generation, and Smash TV twin stick shooting. Since the game is different each time you play it, there is infinite replayablility. I cannot recommend this game enough.