บทวิจารณ์ล่าสุดโดย Kituss

A competent, albeit slightly janky platformer in which the difficulty comes from the controls.

Controlling a jester on a unicycle leads to some awkward sliding that forces you to "stop and go" as you platform, which isn't too hard but can get a bit demanding when you also have to juggle with cannonballs, fire, spikes and other hazards. Later levels get a bit tough but stay fun. There are a hundred levels (+40 bonus ones), divided into 5 realms that each introduce new stuff: bouncing springs, cannons, falling hazards, fire...

All in all, Tightrope Theatre is one of Adventure Islands' most average platformers: it's not great, but it's cheap, fun and should last around an hour and a half at most. I recommend trying out some of their other titles like Total Party Kill which are a bit more interesting imo.

SokoFrog is on the easy side and the music is super annoying since it's a very short loop that doesn't change throughout the whole game. However, it's nice to look at with some very cute frog skins and introduces mechanics at a rapid pace which makes it interesting enough to play through for an hour or so. I love ice sliding puzzles and was delighted to find some here.
It's a good, cheap and very casual Sokoban game if you're not looking for something too complicated and relaxing! 🐸📦

Boots Quest DX is an adventure game in which you'll walk around, interact with people and pick up items. Most of these items will be useless, but not all: some are quest items for NPCs, some are little hats you can put on your character and some are boots that can increase your speed and stylishness.

It's a short game that has a simple goal: you want to find the Best Boots that came to you in a dream. There's nothing too complicated about it, and that's the most charming part of Boots Quest DX: it's pure, simple fun. Everything you can interact with has something to say, and it's always funny and charming. From a man who wants to find the best fern to a gang of tough sun baddies to a ghost merchant looking for futility, everyone's worth your time talking to them and maybe looking for an item that could help them. Most of the time, you'll be rewarded with boots that increase some of your stats, the main of which is the ability to go faster.

Zipping around the world once you get some speed upgrades and looking for secrets if super fun, and there are tons of secrets. I spent two hours on Boots Quest DX, finished the game and was surprised to see I was missing about 20% of the game's content after exploring what I thought was everything it had to offer.

I absolutely recommend giving Boots Quest DX a try at this asking price. It's got tons of charm and funny writing, it's pretty cheap, and it'll stick around in your mind for a bit!

Fun and quirky roguelike that can best be described as a The Binding of Isaac-like: four levels with around ten floors and a boss each, a final boss on top of that, 20-something items with various effects on stats such as damage, speed, rate of fire and health... It's very short but plays well and has a fun if slightly creepy atmosphere. Definitely recommend giving it a try on sale!

Flat Eye is an innovative mix between a resource management sim and a visual novel. While it’s not officially categorized as the latter of the two, its emphasis on story and character dialogues makes it a great candidate for the genre for reasons that will be explained later on.

First off, most of the game is spent managing a shop. It’s situated in a gas station in Iceland, and your objective is to make it profitable. This entails completing tasks to manage the shop, installing new modules, making sales and speaking to customers. As the game progresses, you unlock new and more interesting modules, starting with a soda machine and ending up selling virtual reality trips!
Despite being the main part of Flat Eye, it’s not my favourite – I’d say it’s serviceable at best. There’s no real problem with the shop sim, but it’s very basic and linear, with the best feature being the customisation. It’s where the game’s art, being all tech-y and smooth, shines the most as it makes for a presentation that goes very well with its narrative side. Despite that, there are moments where managing the shop feels monotone because you have to wait a long time between story beats.

Interestingly enough, Flat Eye shares a striking number of similarities to the visual novel genre. It’s not exactly one, as the meat of the game lies in the shop sim, but it’s developed enough that even its developers specify there is an “emphasis on story and narrative choices”. Several characters called Premium Customers can visit the shop if you have installed specific modules. These customers all have interesting character arcs, complete with an introduction, development and a conclusion that ask the player to make choices while thinking about big society questions. This is why Flat Eye is more of a narrative game that a management sim game in my opinion, and it’s perfectly fine that way – just don’t expect too much depth from the shop sim part.

All in all, Flat Eye is an easy recommendation. It’s not expensive, feels very refreshing thanks to its themes and setting coupled with an accessible shop sim gameplay that, while being too simple and repetitive, leaves space for the core of the game that is its narrative to shine. Its themes can be a bit heavy, but trigger warnings are provided and the subjects are treated well enough that meeting new characters and helping shape their life always feels rewarding. If you’re looking for a story-driven game in a dystopian setting, I absolutely recommend giving Flat Eye a try!

A very ambitious game with an interesting story in which you're a stranded archaeologist tasked with exploring a ruined city haunted by broken machines. If that seems like something you would like to play, give Niravasi a try - I was not a fan of its gameplay, but it's repetitive at worst and asks you to do some clever note-taking and shuffling around dark maps at best. The real draw is the story and atmosphere of the city which, while I won't spoil anything too big, is a bit reminiscent of some brutalist works such as the manga Blame! or the game NaissanceE. It's got a touch of horror, a lot of mystery and it feels great to explore.

I would absolutely recommend at least trying out Niravasi, since the prologue is quick to finish and you get into the real meat of the game way before the two-hour mark. There's nothing else quite like it!

Curse Crackers: For Whom the Belle Toils is a 2D platformer with an emphasis on fast paced gameplay. It tells the story of Belle, a young girl who gets her boyfriend kidnapped by her rival Bonnie and whose goal is to rescue him. It's also a hidden gem of a game that deserves some of your time.

It's a simple story that's more of a pretext to set up a colorful world filled to the brim with interesting characters, locations, secrets and lore. You could simply get through the end of the 25 main levels, beat the final boss and call it a day ; but why do that when there's another 15 levels off the beaten path as well as 10 post-game extra tough levels?
In the same vein, you could just get through the levels as fast as you can, but you could also collect the three roses as well as secret stuff hidden in each of them - Oathblades, Lore tomes, Gate pieces, post-game Lost souls? And that's not even mentioning the fact that each of these 50 levels has three medals to collect (one for finding a treasure, one for being fast and one for hitting the end goal in an interesting way)! There's a ton of completely optional content for people who enjoy it, and it's mostly great content as well.

Collecting these items and medals will ask you to do some creative platforming in order to reach places, and that's where Curse Crackers really shines. In short, platforming feels great. You can run, jump and launch a bell that bounces off enemies and walls. When it comes back to Belle, she can jump on it to get some extra height as well as distance. Furthermore, you can slide into a jump to get some extra speed and distance, and even combine that with a diagonal bell throw in order to go super high!
All of this allows you to get creative in order to get through levels super fast, which feels great. Going back to the first levels after a while and just blazing through them is something few platformers manage as well as Curse Crackers. Harder levels are a bit more limited since they tend to expect one specific move in order to advance, but they're never too punishing and checkpoints are plenty.
Accessibility-wise, some quests you can complete are tied to unlockable passive items which can make gameplay way easier. Stuff like running twice as fast or having a double jump makes levels trivial, and it's great that these options are included in a diegetic way for people who have trouble with the platforming.

NPCs live in the different locations you can go to and always have a lot to say. They interact with each others, form relationships and ask Belle to help them with stuff. I think this is one of Colorgrave's strengths, as their previous game Prodigal had just as many interesting people to speak with! Nevertheless, I can't say I was a fan of the world's "hidden" lore. It's well-thought, with an antique war that separated the world, a bunch of different races with interesting origins and deities... but it's mostly hidden in lore books and long dialogues that don't feel great to read since it often feels like a lore dump. I would have loved for it to be more present throughout the game, but I can respect the purity of platforming and the fact that everything else is optional.

Curse Crackers is a wonderful platformer with a lot of love and passion put into it. It feels great to play and explore and can be short or quite long depending on what you want out of it - completing every quest and level with all the collectibles took me about 20 hours. I've played some great platformers in 2022 and it managed to outshine all of them - I absolutely recommend giving the demo a try if you're into platformers, since it's quite generous. Colorgrave's other game Prodigal is a Zelda-like that's also worth trying out, as it's super good and shares some ideas as well as game design philosophy!

PsiloSybil is a tough-as-nails 3D platformer that can be easily described as "PS1 Crash Bandicoot" - as easy a comparison it may seem, it fits the game to a T and allows me to start out with a very brief statement: if you want to play an indie Crash game, buy this one immediately.

Gameplay-wise, it's a spiritual successor to the series in almost every way: the world map is divided into a bunch of levels you go through linearly, each level has a bunch of mushrooms you can choose to collect if you're aiming for 100%, pattern-based bosses give a welcome change of pace and there are super strict time trials that also contribute to 100%ing the game. You go through a level by running in 8 directions, making terrifying jumps and slapping enemies.
It's all very familiar, and that's a good thing since PsiloSybil is such a hard game. It starts out easy but very quickly surpasses Crash levels of difficulty, especially if you want to collect everything, which makes you free a mushroom friend! Some levels require you to have freed a specific mushroom friend in order to unlock secret paths. Interestingly, this adds replayability to an already quite replayable game, and obliterating a previously super hard level feels very rewarding.

This difficulty is both a great asset and a detriment for PsiloSybil. On the one hand, it's a game that is definitely not accessible to everyone. Levels get progressively tougher even without aiming for 100%, and there's no way to make it any easier: easier you make it or you don't. This can absolutely feel frustrating at times, since jumps tend to feel just a bit too short and checkpoints are too rare at times. This is a deliberate design choice, but it still makes some levels quite frustrating, which I feel is a pity.
On the other hand, it's not *made* for everyone. It absolutely caters to an audience of hardcore Crash fans, the kind that spent hours beating the series' levels as fast as possible and is looking for a similar experience. In that respect, they couldn't ask for a better game and will definitely have a great time pulling their hair if they're ready to deal with a few annoying problems.

In short, PsiloSybil is both a tough and an easy recommendation. It's not for everyone, but if you've seen the game's trailer and know what to expect, there won't be any surprise. If you're in doubt, there's a great demo that showcases a few levels to get an idea of how it plays - it's not perfect, but it does everything quite well and the vibes are absolutely immaculate.
It's important to note that this review was written during Early Access, but the levels currently there won't change much: the dev, bad_vertex, is active on Twitter and posts updates quite often. I absolutely recommend playing PsiloSybil, especially since there's a demo available and the asking price is on point.

Super Sami Roll is a 3D platformer unlike a lot of recent entries in the genre - there's close to no narrative or fluff, the focus is on pure precision platforming. And there's a lot of platforming to do, since the game has five worlds and close to 80 levels. They're each quite short but are on a strict timer, to which you can add seconds by collecting coins. It's a great idea that gives an incentive to take a path that could be more difficult, but give you a few coins in order to add five seconds to the timer.

These levels can be made even shorter thanks to the use of the two main moves: a tongue grapple you can jump out of to get a lot of distance, and a stomp that translates your momentum into a forward dash. They're extremely fun to use and can lead to insane skips, which makes speedruns super fun to watch as well as try out for yourself
As a result, you have a ton of freedom to tackle obstacles in Super Sami Roll. There's an obvious path through each level that, at first at least, doesn't ask a lot out of you ; but there's also an optional berry to find in either hidden places or on more difficult paths, as well as some alternate exits in order to unlock... secret levels!
These are a lot of fun since they're usually quite a bit harder. They also contain an optional key, and getting all of the keys unlocks... a secret world! With more levels! And a super tough final gauntlet that makes use of everything you can do!

Difficulty-wise, it's the absolute hardest Super Sami Roll gets. But it's very much optional. The base game only requires you to beat around 12 levels out of 15 per world and you can ignore every single collectible, which makes the trek way more accessible. It's not an easy game at all, though! The difficulty curve is generally tight but gets a bit tough in the last world, with some levels that would benefit from a couple more checkpoints. It's nothing too bad but I could see it getting in the way of people enjoying the game. The game can be made easier by activating a Relaxed mode that completely removes the time mechanic so that players can complete levels at their leisure, which is very welcome, but not enough to completely fix these problems.

Super Sami Roll is an excellent game that does almost everything right. Lots of levels, tons of secrets, character customisation and super fun movement options make it a blast to go through. It could do with more difficulty options, but it's still one of the best 3D platformers available on Steam and a cruelly underrated one. 100% took me around 7 hours - that's 78 levels beaten, including the final gauntlet, with every collectible got. I absolutely recommend buying Super Sami Roll!

Loplight is a 2D action game starring a bunny exploring a ruined, post-apocalyptic world you don't know anything about.

Gameplay is pretty simple : you have a gun and a sword. Firing bullet at enemies recharges your "sword meter", which allows you to use powerful slashes against your enemies. Using one of these slashes recharge your "healing bar", which in turn allows you to heal at anytime. You can also dash in order to avoid attacks and parry a handful of them. That's about it! Sound design, and although it can feel a bit clunky at times, it definitely works. The problem is that it just works ; you're never motivated to actually fight regular enemies since they drop nothing and can mostly be bypassed. In another game, the motivator could have been the combat, but that's not the case here. Bosses don't have this problem and are generally fun, although a bit too lengthy. However, their greatest asset is their actual appearance.
The last part of the game is quite different as you play another character in a 2D platforming segment, and again, another one against the last boss. This is a wonderful idea that works great, although they suffer from the same general stiffness.

Indeed, I feel that Loplight's strong suit is its presentation. Scumhead is known for their very unique horror designs, and each enemy and boss feels completely unique - not just to the game, but as a whole. As a result, exploring areas is always motivated by what kind of bosses you can find, and this offsets the passable gameplay. The final boss in particular is a wonderful to look at and I absolutely love what has been done with them. This goes hand in hand with the narrative design which exploits Hermeticism and other philosophical concepts. I don't know much about them, which made the story all the more interesting since it's very different from your typical fantasy or even Lovecraftian stuff.

All of this combined makes for what is certainly an interesting game with a very unique world and story. Loplight isn't too difficult thanks to the health regen mechanic and lasts around an hour. A very appropriate length for its price, although some of the "levels" could have been made longer or allowed for some side paths to explore. All in all, it's a solid experience that I definitely recommend, especially if you already enjoy Scumhead's style!