Recent reviews by Lizstar

My favorite enemies are the umbrella bois. They are very head empty energy, just like me. Also, girls.

Extremely cute love letter to 80s arcade games. I also see the Amiga Ball there, too~

It's short and sweet, clearly made for arcade fans who like to 1cc games or go for high scores.

This game is not just a meme. It is, of course, ALSO a meme. But I was worried when I heard this game that it was just 20 years late cashing in on jokes, and wouldn't really GET the CD-I Zelda games, at least, not any more than "tee hee animation bad"

My takeaway after beating this game is that Arzette proves that the CD-I Zeldas (Wand of Gamelon and Faces of Evil, at least) could have been good, if a few things were shifted around. This game is true to the spirit of the games its paying homage to, while also improving them and making them actually enjoyable to experience beyond a youtube poop.

Only negative I have to this game is that the Ice Queen character, Ciclena, should have been in more of it. I saw the looks she and Arzette gave each other, they are adorable, and Ciclena is hot af.

Selling this game for 12 dollars is a crime, this should be 60 dollars, and we should be thanking the devs for letting us play it at all.

Herpetology is named that because "herp" is the noise you make when you die because in your own hubris you thought you could farm 10 bone snakes. You could not farm 10 bone snakes.

Cute "survivors" style game, deceptively simple, but extremely replayable. I found myself still wanting to play more and more. Has a nice "build how you want" style to customize your own experience. That way I can avoid BONE SNAKES. WHICH I WILL.

This game is a five hour panic attack.

But you know, in a good way. Healthy management for anxiety is a waste of time, just scream and tackle right through it.

It's only been out for a day, but already this game deserves more people to play it. If you're wondering if you should get it, the answer is PROBABLY yes, but I'll try and explain my thoughts.

Xross Dreams is, at its core, a love-letter to VS puzzle games from the 90s and beyond. I can only imagine the dev played Tetris VS Puyo Puyo and went "hold my beer", and mashed em ALL together. It's like the Mario Crossover of Puzzle Games. Every puzzle game you can imagine (except for a few notable missing ones, Tetris is prolly missing for fear of their antsy lawyers), mashed together into one game.

The single player is enjoyable, but is quite hard. There are, at the time of writing, there are ten different playable characters (with more being added later, so I've heard), and you won't be good at all of them. Each character's gameplay is a different puzzle game, most of them classics, but there's some original ones in here too. A mild complaint, for the new ones, the tutorial isn't quite in depth enough. I recognized all the others, as I'm a big puzzle nerd, but Journey in particular really confused me at first. No big deal though, and it DOES have a tutorial mode, which is better than a lot of games like this.

The game handles trash and attacks well, depending on each character. And in single player, your enemy isn't actually playing. They just periodically send over trash to your side, and you can see the trash on their side you're throwing back. It's a solid way to do it, instead of pretending like the AI is playing some game against you. So far the game seem relatively balanced, maybe with some weaker than others (poor Skeleton seems pretty weak, tragically), but balance changes can come and go. It doesn't seem too bad with that right now.

Also, the game has a tendency to crash. It just came out today, and it's to be expected. You might think that's a big turn off, but honestly it's not as bad as you'd expect? It launches fast, and you get back into the action. Each match is, y'know, the length of an arcade puzzle bout, so like a couple minutes max. It's no big deal if you lost one due to a crash, just try again. I'm sure this issue will be fixed soon, anyway.

Another issue I expect to be fixed soon is the online multiplayer, which seemed broken each time I tried it. Again, it's the first day. But if you want to hold off on buying it for that, I guess I can't blame you? VS is a big positive for a game like this, but I can't stress enough, the single player is very fun on its own. And it's extremely varied. I played for five hours straight today, and didn't get bored at all.

All in all, I'm extremely excited by this game, and super excited to see if any more comes of it in the future. Again, please consider getting it and supporting the devs, as they've made something truly special here, and we need more fun VS puzzle games getting some spotlights.

(As a note, I was gifted this game by a friend. It wasn't on my radar to buy, and I haven't played a Shovel Knight game since the first one, so I'm not like a mega-fan or anything)

I'm seeing a surprising amount of negative reviews here, so I wanna give my two cents and boost the game, cause while it has flaws, I'd say it's worth playing.

Shovel Knight Dig is kinda like if Shovel Knight, Downwell, Mr Driller, and modern Roguelite sensibilities are mixed in a blender. If you enjoy roguelites at all, and also enjoyed Shovel Knight, you'll probably enjoy this. But I want to acknowledge some of the criticisms I've been hearing.

I've seen people say the level design is bad. It's basically an assorted bunch of predesigned blocks randomly generated into a downward well. Y'know, like a roguelite. The game incentivizes you to go fast, but at the same time secrets are around every corner. At first it might seem frustrating to not be able to explore every nook and cranny to find the secrets, but that's how a roguelite works. You can't get everything. You gotta make do with what you can, because you'll be coming back soon enough. It's about going as far as you can and getting as much as you can so you can build up your arsenal for future games.

Secondly, this game is quite hard. I found that it seemed pretty overtuned, but the game actually has a lot of accessibility options. You can easily turn up your max health and damage, to make it easier to tackle. Sure that might hurt your pride but uh, I think it's better to enjoy the game than continue to slam your head against a way with pride and not have any fun with the game you bought. I also saw someone complain about the constantly respawning enemies... and I do agree to an extent. They're really my one problem so far, enemies will continue to spawn and chase you, and while it's easy to deal with them, the game is about moving downward, so the camera always has you on the top of the screen. But the game is also about bouncing, so I constantly bounce into the enemies above me who I scrolled past. I think a minor tweak to make them unspawn once off screen would fix that problem immediately~

And lastly, this game is gorgeous. The art in shovel knight has always been very pretty, it feels taken up to 11 here. If Shovel Knight is like, NES taken to its extreme, this feels like SNES taken to its extreme. Very gorgeous pixel art.

Anyway long story short, while it's not the best roguelite I've ever played, it's worth checking out. I still haven't gotten to the bottom, so I intend to play it more to find out what's down there!

I've played literally thousands of games, and I do not say this lightly when I say this is one of the best designed games ever.

As I played it, it evolved three times. First I thought it was a cute modern take on Zelda 1. It is. Z1 is hands-off at its most classic, but it's a very "where the heck do I go" kinda game. In Tunic, you can get lost, but there's always hints, there's always a way to figure out where to go, no matter how obscure, and after you find it, you may even go "OH GOD THAT'S WHAT THE MANUAL MEANT"

Then, it became very hard. I then thought it was also a fun take on Dark Souls. I actually don't care for Dark Souls, but this I enjoyed. The combat and gameplay is fluid and fast paced. Also DS has boring aesthetic design, and this game is freakin' gorgeous. (Sorry to any DS fans, please don't flay me alive for my bad opinions <3)

And then I found out the third game this reminds me of. La-Mulana. Now if you haven't played La-Mulana, what I mean is, this game has puzzles. It has some AMAZING, MIND BENDING PUZZLES. They BLEW MY MIND. If that's not a thing for you, it's not even neccesary, but trust me, you should experience those puzzles.

I loved this game. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

A fish told me I was smelly. I called him smelly back, so he defenestrated me.

This is exactly what I hoped for, 10/10