Recent reviews by [PMC] Portable Merc Collector

I bought these because I wanted to support the game. The game itself is fantastic and in my opinion does a free-to-play model well.

That said.. I'm also using this for reviewing purposes. Putting up skins on such a high price bundle like this does NOT set a good precedent for the future. If these skins were sold in a cheaper pack with ONLY the skins I'd happily tell anyone who liked them to pick them up.

As it stands, one of the absolute worst things they could've done with these is the FOMO. This SHOULD NOT have been a thing with these skins, and MUST NOT be in the future. I'll never buy another pack like this should the FOMO aspect stay. This could be encouraging them to release more, yes, but if we don't get our feedback in now, they could take little of it as the rest of the playerbase being fine with it anyway.

I like the skins and have purchased it in good faith, but please DE, please never have anymore FOMO items in the future. It's not necessarily the price, or the skins I have a problem with, it's the limited time aspect. This is not the way to do it, don't allow this to become the future.

Surprisingly really fun! Bee Island is a tower defense style colony construction game in which you expand from your queen and build up your own island over time. Your bees automatically collect resources and fight for you, it's all automated! But you are the one who builds tiles and structures and designs the island. Your main research building is used to upgrade your structures, bees and even abilities at times. By the end, you go from basic wooden siege weapons to modern military weaponry and blow stealth bomber moths out of the sky!

It's simple and not shy about what you get, if you like tower defense games and management games, this game'll be for you! Especially if you want something simple. However if you want something more advanced and deep, with very in-depth strategy, this is much more simple then that.

Honestly the aesthetic is cute and humorous with the cute lil plushie like bees next to massive modern military gun turrets. Plus, if you want a game where you don't have to think much and just build, this'll be fun!

Looking forward to where updates take this game! I got it at -35% off and don't regret my purchase at all.

I got it because I wanted to support the devs for making a great game!


ALSO THE BEE IS ADORABLE AND NOBODY CAN TELL ME OTHERWISE


monke

The Cult of the Lamb must be rallied once again.. many of the acolytes have been in hiding amongst the populace.. once you've rallied them, I will give you further instructions..



Cult of the Lamb is a surprisingly very fun city builder mixed with a roguelike where you spend half the game building a nice little town of cultists, and the other half going on crusades into different parts of the world and obtaining new loot to use in leveling up your followers, your cult and your own abilities.

The cultish aspect of it is quite cartoony and really flows well with the atmosphere and you are given a surprising amount of choice within the game of how you want to run your cult! You can be a fairly nice leader and treat your followers well, even to the point of bringing them back from the dead after dying. The opposite is also a possibility, where you can sacrifice your followers to increase your powers and abilities as well as cannibalism and several other side effects and dark rituals. Even allowing you to take them with you on your crusades!

Combat and controls are very smooth and surprisingly fluid in the crusades, the boss battles are very reminiscent of Devolver Digital's previous games like Enter the Gungeon and Hotline Miami, often seeming like Bullet Hells. However despite the bosses being bullet hells the life system is fairly forgiving and gives you a set amount of lives that allow you to take more damage before you die.

Speaking of dying, during a crusade has no negative effects outside of losing some of your resources you obtained during the crusade, which I like a lot! It allows you to keep playing even if you die without too much punishment.

However this game is not without it's faults, it blends both the city building aspect and the rougelike elements very well, but there are a few nitpicks I have.

1: Some QoL changes to allow blessings to be more easily done would be appreciated. Smaller cults are easily manageable however in bigger cults of 10+ people it becomes tedious hunting down everyone to bless them.

2: This one comes down to personal preference but after swinging your weapon you become immobile for a short time. You can still roll but you are locked in place for a tiny amount of time, leaving enemies to hit you. It's likely a balance thing and doesn't break the game for me, but it does feel a tad clunky after a bit.

3: More choices! I love the fact your not locked into being an evil or benevolent leader and I would love to see more variety in choices you have for running your cult. Your current rituals and choices of boosts for your cult give you a great bout of variety, but each option gives you around 4 choices total to pick from. It's understandable because the boosts together are already quite big, it just feels a bit small.

Overall I love the game! It combines roguelike and city building without leaning too hard in either direction. The adorable art style doesn't feel out of place and after playing it for a decent amount of time, it's actually a lot more tame than I expected so the art style makes it stand out even more! There's plenty of cultist imagery to go around but it's surprisingly a lot less gory than I was expecting. Not that that's a bad thing, I actually really like that!

If you are looking for a fun game that has city building and roguelike elements with a cute art style, pick this one up! I'm just starting out but so far it's easy to pick up and play without being too easy or too challenging on the Normal difficulty, I can easily see people trying many different routes on the higher difficulties. If you are looking for something with advanced multi-layered city building or long runs into a roguelike environment with permadeath, this game isn't quite like that and you may prefer other options.

It's very nice and simple while still having enough depth to keep you playing even after you get the mechanics down. The level of customization for the followers is great too! I liked it a lot more than I thought I would and if you are thinking of picking it up, give it a try! There's plenty of fun to be had starting your own satanic animal crossing village.

Minecraft Dungeons is basically if Minecraft played like Diablo, as many others have probably said. However it'll also teach you to hate Piglins even more.


Buy it for that reason.

The original idle game that started it all, finally here on Steam.

For those who don't know, Cookie Clicker began as a browser game in 2013 with a very simple premise. Bake cookies, and see how many you can get. Since then, it's expanded so much it's quite honestly amazing to see how it's come since then. There are so many upgrades, minigames, things to do, for a idle game there is so much depth here.

For veterans, this is a version for Steam that still allows you to import and or export your saves to make sure you keep your progress with the web browser versions. If you do not like that, you now know, and can make a decision on if you want to purchase or not.

For me personally I bought this to support Orteil, this game has come so far since 2013 and I'll be damned if it isn't still, my favorite idle game ever. With the promise of Workshop support, and more, I cannot wait to see what the future of this game will hold. From mods that adjust the difficulty, add new things, or even reskin how the entire game looks, it's going to be a wild ride.

If your a veteran like me who's played on and off over the years, a hardcore player with every single achievement, or a new baker wondering if it's the game for you, I would 100% recommend this. If your brand new, I can guarantee you you will get your $5 worth of this game and more if you enjoy idle games with a quirky aesthetic, and for veterans, why not support Orteil for making a game we've all enjoyed for so long for free? 5 dollars for this much content in a idle game is not a lot.

Let's go bake some cookies together lads!

I first bought this game on recommendation for a friend because I love Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door, needless to say, I'm more than happy with it.

At first glance, Bug Fables seems like a Paper Mario ripoff, and while the style is similar and it uses the same style of battle system (timing based attacks which made me like it even more) it is also original in it's own way. The characters are fairly unique and all lovable in their own ways and the story feels nicely paced. Nothing is dragged or drawn out for too long and each chapter held my attention without making me annoyed or feeling like one particular area was too hard.

A highlight of the game for me is with the character Leif. While I won't spoil anything in here, his backstory was definitely not what I was expecting and it made me think the game's writing was close to the same level if not maybe a little better than Paper Mario TTYD.

The story is good, the characters are likable, but what about the gameplay, in short, very fun for me. The game plays in the same style as Paper Mario TTYD where many attacks utilize timing based commands rather than simple action commands, if you like rhythm based games or have good timing, you'll likely have fun with this game, but if you struggle with things like that, you might have trouble. As you level up you can add new boosts to your stats like health, points that allow you to use specials, or points that allow you to use badges. Badges are items that can be equipped to certain characters to give them boosts, perks, or a new move sometimes. Similar to Paper Mario TTYD, they shake the game up a bit while not being too OP, I also found out that while some might be a bit useless at first, later on in the game some badges can save your life.

Overall, Bug Fables is a very good game styled after Paper Mario, while still being original in it's own right. Fun to pick up and play while not being too difficult, and while at first glance, might seem like just a ripoff, to me, it was much more and ended up being a game that I love quite a lot.

If you are a fan of Paper Mario, specifically The Thousand Year Door, grab this if you think you'll like it, you won't regret it!

"This is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flash game it shouldn't be making me have the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stress levels of a 92 year old in cardiac arrest."

-A friend of mine who got pissed after the doctor left in the game that ruined his 16 win streak.

I bought this game when it was on sale and I have to say the price that is set for it is a bit steep. But the game itself is very fun, if you are a fan of games like Dwarf Fortress or Terraria you may like this game.

-The Good-

There is plenty of places to explore and a decent amount of challenge too.
Enemy waves spawn after a certain period of time that will attack your base and you must defeat them. As well as natural monsters below ground or at night. This adds a nice layer to combat as it spaces it out enough (depending on difficulty) so you are not overwhelmed but at the same time provides more for you to fight then just looking for fights.

The way crafting is done in this game is unique to me as the system is mostly something you would only find in a singleplayer game. You place the materials in a grid to craft various items the way you would in a singleplayer or multiplayer survival game. This is not a system I have seen before in management games like this and it spices it up from the usual "click here and done" system. Recipies for crafting items are shown by clicking on an item and make it easy to craft items. After crafting an item once you can click the craft button instantly if you hav the resources and it will instantly place the resources for you. This system in my opinion is efficient and easily takes the tedious parts out of a crafting interface.

You are completely free to build, there is no limit to where you can place blocks or where you can build, if you prepare the area you want to build at you can build there. You could make a sprawling village for your dwarves or build a single mega fortress in the middle of the map. Whatever you would like.

Temples (or ruins, I'm not sure what to call them) that spawn underground are fairly common and keep mining from getting boring. These temples often have some powerful monsters to fight but also could hold some treasures to be found as well.

The tech tree is unlocked by crafting items instead of researching. If you make something for a new technology, you begin to fill up a meter that when completely full, will allow you to unlock the next technology down the road.

-The Bad-

I have ran into the buggy AI that other reviews have talked about, but for me personally it doesn't happen too often. However it is definitely there, while I have not had it happen at a bad time it tends to mostly occur in single block ladder spaces where dwarves will spaz out and you will have to manually control them to move them away, once you do they will go back to working as intended.

The tech tree is kind of small in my opinion. While it isn't tiny or shortened and some things do take quite a while to research fully it feels a little lacking currently.

Biomes are mostly restricted to world generation at the start instead of generated into the map itself. While this does change up playstyles depending on what you set the world to if you make a forest world you will basically get a forest and only a forest. There are no multi biomes in worlds.

Dwarves often feel too slow. They don't move like snails (which are in the game btw) but they do sometimes noticeably take quite a bit of time to go from point A to B depending on where you tell them to go. This is most noticeable at the start of the game where you will actively be looking for wood. If you tell a dwarf to go chop down a tree near the side of the map, they will definitely feel slow to get there and back.

The creatures you can discover feels a bit limited. There is a good amount but there aren't many surface creatures or nighttime monsters that you can find. So far once you have seen them once you've seen them all, and aside from the bosses and a select few monsters there are not many monsters that will provide a real threat to you once you get medium to high level equipment.

-Overall-

The game has a decent amount of fun and challenge, harder difficulties will be challenging and there is plenty of ways you can build things for your little dwarves. While the current game feels limited and some design choices are questionable nothing feels bad enough to be a reason to avoid the game. I would give this game a 7/10.

You will play a lot if you like challenge.
You will die a lot if you like zombies.
You will build more walls then trump ever could.
You will raise an army to destroy the undead threat.

They Are Billions, yes. But more importantly

You Are Trump