Recent reviews by LeLobster

Gone Home is a first-person exploration game set in the 90's in which you play through the eyes of 21 year old Katie. After spending a year overseas she returns to her family home only to discover there is nobody there to greet her. Pinned to the front door she finds a letter written by her younger sister Samantha telling her to not come look for her, but Katie decides otherwise.

Estimated reading time: 2,5 minutes.

It's hard to talk more about the plot without majorly spoiling the important bits of the story, so I'll focus on the gameplay and presentation instead.
Walking simulators are obviously not know for their captivating gameplay mechanics, and Gone Home is no different. You can walk around, look at or interact with some objects, and read random pieces of text you find laying around and that's it. In general I don't really have an issue with that, and I actually quite like some of these slow-paced exploration type games (recent examples being: Firewatch, and Kona), but I found this one to be incredibly boring.

The story is set up quite nicely, and initially there is a good bit of mystery mixed with an almost haunting atmosphere, but it drags on so much without every really becoming engaging that I found myself losing interest more and more the longer it went on.
There are a lot of text pieces for you to read which are irrelevant to the main storyline, and it feels like you're just wasting your time reading them.
I do recognize that they mostly serve to provide additional backstory, but if the game is already quite uninteresting in itself I do not care about learning any extra backstory, especially not bits and pieces about things far removed from the main storyline. At that point it comes across more like padding the game's length.

As for interactivity, there hardly is any. You can pick up some objects and rotate them but there is literally no point, and looking at common household products packaging is only "fun" for a handful of times.
The exception being things like game cartridges and magazines, but really only because they paint a nice picture about the time period the game is set in.
If you grew up in the 90's yourself you'll probably be familiar with some of the things you'll see laying around, and especially Samantha's room straight up looks like a 90's time-capsule. It's some fun nostalgia but really does nothing more than occasionally evoke a 'Hah, that's neat!' response.
There are also no actual puzzles to break up the monotony of the gameplay, so that's not working in its favor either. What this game considers a puzzle is coming across a lock in one room, and finding the combination printed on A4 paper in a binder in another. Not only is that bad security, but it's also very boring gameplay.

In the end though, the story does wrap up pretty nicely and there is an emotional high point which, although somewhat clichéd, feels genuine and I can definitely see why a lot of people like this game, especially if you can relate to the main characters. Sadly, I did not.

Honestly, not a lot. It took me only 2,5 hours to beat the entire game. And, even though I got very bored, I still tried to read all the text pieces I came across.
And when you take away all the irrelevant bits of reading you can do, what is left is maybe 1,5 hours of gameplay, at most. That's not much when keeping in mind the price.

It is built in Unity and has native Linux support since release.

This game, and really the Unity engine in general, doesn't seem to like integrated graphics processors that much. Normally this isn't that big of an issue because lowering the graphics has always made games more than playable for me, but here the slowdowns were sometimes unbearable.
Most likely not an issue for people with normal gaming rigs, so just a warning for laptop gamers.

Just like the game, the achievements here are pretty boring as well.
If you want to avoid spoilers, and don't want follow a guide on your first playthrough, you'll have to do at least 4 playthroughs of which two are speedruns.
Yes, there are actual speedrun achievements in a slow-paced exploration based walking simulator.
One other playthrough has to be done with commentary mode enabled and you have to find all the audio nodes, of which there are way too many.
The rest of the achievements are mostly easter eggs and other miscellaneous tasks.
Videos and guides are available and 100%'ing the rest of the game will most likely not take you more than an additional two hours.

The Darkside Detective revolves around Detective McQueen and his slightly thick-headed sidekick Officer Dooley, who together form the Darkside Division of the Twin Lakes Police Department. Twin Lakes is a city which has a long history with cults, monsters and other spooky things but thanks to McQueen and Dooley its citizens have nothing to worry about, most of the time at least.

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.

It's a pretty simplistic point-and-click comedy adventure game, simplistic in graphics as well as interface and gameplay but more on that later.
The game is split up in six separate self-contained cases, and three bonus cases which were added after its initial release. There actually is an overarching storyline present in some of them, but it's pretty insignificant to be honest. Although it will be able to provide a nice tie-in for the second season which was announced in August of last year.

Each case can take somewhere from 20 minutes to an hour to solve depending on your keenness and your desire to uncover everything. Because believe me when I say that this game is chock-full of silly puns, jokes and 80-90's pop-culture references, and I absolutely mean it when I say chock-full. The humour is pretty accessible though and overall I found the writing to be fairly sharp and witty but, of course, with the occasional duds.
However, because sense of humour is a very personal thing, my opinion on the funniness of the writing is largely irrelevant and you should judge for yourself by watching the trailer as it gives a pretty good taste of what to expect.
But having said all that, I think the amount of jokes is also one of the games' biggest negatives. The rapid speed at which puns and funny situations are thrown at you can really leave you joke-tired if you're playing for longer sessions at a time, and because of that I would highly suggest to pick a case and give the game a rest after you've solved it.
Of course it might be a different experience for you, but that's how I ended up finishing this game. Splitting it up helps keep the writing fresh and makes the game more enjoyable as a whole.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1844453687

Regarding the graphics, the over-pixelated art style is actually quite well done, the lighting and other visual effects look very good as well, but the lack of nicely detailed characters combined with the sparse use of animations is a little too reminiscent of McPixel for my taste.
You could make a point about it being somewhat expected with a game of this scope, especially considering Spooky Doorways is only a three man dev team with limited resources, but personally I would've appreciated a bit more detail.

As for the interface, there isn't really one. You have an inventory and that's it. The game automatically chooses what's the appropriate action when you click. In short, this means that a left-click will be LOOK AT, USE, TALK TO and all the other conventional adventure game interactions in one depending on what you're interacting with. This style of gameplay makes getting through the scenes a breeze, but at the same time it also somewhat limits the freedom you have in puzzle solving.
This can either be seen as a pro or a con depending on how you look at it. If you're a big adventure game fan this might be a slight disappointment, but for the more casual players it plays out very comfortably.
There is also a greatly appreciated lack of pixel hunting and illogical puzzle structure, which quite often plagues this genre of adventure games. The latter is not excluded entirely but overall I thought the puzzles were designed very well and I had no need to consult a walkthrough. If you do manage to get yourself stuck though, the game is pretty generously handing out hints disguised as item descriptions.
And besides the genre staple style of puzzles there is also the occasional actual puzzle you'll have to solve. These are not very hard but do bring some extra challenge to the game in a nifty way.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1844453638

All in all, it's fairly casual but fun and suitable for everyone who likes humorous puzzle games. Pretty easy to recommended, and especially if you're into this genre of games already. I'm personally looking forward to the second season, which is currently available to wishlist here on Steam.

Native build is available and has no issues running on my system. It did have some issues in the past, like blackscreens and broken achievements, but those have since been fixed.
It's also available on GOG[www.gog.com], and Humble[www.humblebundle.com] if you like DRM-Free.

I'm curious how the graphics scale on larger resolutions. But as I only play my games on a puny 1366x768 resolution, I can't provide any info on that subject.

There are only a handful of story related achievements, the rest of them are all missable. But most can easily be gotten accidentally during a normal playthrough if you'd take the time to experiment. You can also quickly replay cases afterwards to clean up any achievements you might have missed, and there is a great completionist guide available as well.

In A Short Hike you play as Claire, a little bird who's spending some time away from her busy city-life to enjoy the serenity of an island where her Aunt May works as a ranger. She's anxiously waiting on an important phone call but the problem is that there is no reception, so your Aunt suggests you to go on a hike to a mountaintop called Hawk Peak, as you might be able to get some reception there.

Estimated reading time: 1,5 minutes.

The first thing about A Short Hike that obviously catches the eye are the very low poly visuals, somewhat reminiscent of early PS1 era games. Personally I think it looks fantastic and fits the game really well but I can understand it being off-putting to some people. Although I'll say that it'd be a shame if you'd give the game a pass purely because of the graphics because there's a sweet adventure waiting ahead if you give it a chance.

When you first begin your journey your movement is somewhat limited to a jump and a short glide but soon you'll discover Golden Feathers scattered around the island, these feathers represent your stamina and will allow you to flap your wings to jump higher and reach places you weren't able before. In no time you'll find yourself soaring from structure to mountain ledge and back again and it is lovely. The controls are smooth and flying around feels effortless.
And despite the island not being very large in size it feels absolutely packed to the brim with life and things to discover. You'll meet plenty of other quirky animal characters along the way which all have their own unique little stories, and some might even have a task or challenge for you to complete.
It's incredibly hard not to get sidetracked by all the NPCs, coins, treasure chests, and various other items because, initially, everywhere you go you'll run into something new.

A big strength of A Short Hike is that you can make the hike as short or long as you want to, and the game totally gives you that freedom. While it is hardly required to do anything more than finding a couple Golden Feathers to reach Hawk Peak and beat the game, I would definitely recommend taking your time to discover everything there is to discover because in this game it's all about the journey, not the destination.

Highly recommended little gem.

No effort at all. The game is built in Unity and has a native Linux build.
It's also available on itch[adamgryu.itch.io] and comes with an additional Steam key.

Not really, only thing I would recommend is to play it with a controller if you have that possibility as it feels a bit more relaxed, but playing it with keyboard and mouse is also perfectly fine.

There are only two true story related achievements, most of the others require you to be very thorough in your island exploration. You'll have to find every collectable feather, catch every fish, beat certain NPC challenges, and talk to a certain NPC at a specific time. This doesn't have to be done before you reach the credits though, as you'll be able to return to the island afterwards and finish them at your leisure.
Altogether not very hard but can be a little time consuming and 100%'ing will take somewhere around four to five hours.